Seven Year Promise
by Fox in the Stars
Summary: Natsume is haunted by a recurring nightmare that he's drowning. Nyanko-sensei sets out to investigate, then a strange youkai appears: one who knows that the answer lies in Natsume's past — and needs Tanuma's help to put things right before it's too late.
1. The Drowning Dream

Anyone who wants to use my work as a basis for their own fanfic, fanart, podfic, translation, or other transformative work has my permission to do so.

Many thanks to Branch for commenting on the draft (and giving very good advice about the ending in particular). Any errors that remain are entirely my own.

_This story in its original form makes intentional use of white space in some scenes. If you don't see the white spaces, they've been stripped, in which case I recommend reading the story on the Archive of Our Own if you can._

_"____Okina" is a classic style of Noh mask depicting a wise old man._

**Seven Year Promise**

by Fox in the Stars

based on _Natsume Yuujinchou_  
by Midorikawa Yuki and Brain's Base

* * *

**Chapter One: The Drowning Dream**

The little river Takashi crossed on the way to school ran clear as glass, showing rocks and water plants and even glimpses of fish between the glitters of reflected sun — and this morning, the sight of it gave him a deep sense of dread. It pulled his attention as he walked down the path alongside it listening with half an ear to Nishimura and Kitamoto and guiding himself by their backs in the corner of his eye.

"Hey, Natsume!" Nishimura's voice snapped him back to his senses.

"Huh?"

"You okay? You were all spaced out and you look kind of pale."

"Oh, sorry," he said. "I didn't sleep so well last night."

"Did something happen?" Kitamoto asked.

"Worried about how you did on the test?" Nishimura suggested.

"No, I... I just had a bad dream," Takashi told them. "I dreamt I was falling into water, so, that's why..." It had to be, although it hardly explained this feeling. The river tugged at him like a cliff's edge, but the bridge was in sight. Once he was across it...

"Falling in the water..." Nishimura rubbed his chin. "I don't remember what Freud said about that one."

"I don't want to know!"

"Maybe it's from the time you fell off the bridge here," Kitamoto offered. "That scared me just watching it — we're lucky you didn't hit your head."

"Yeah, that's probably it," Takashi agreed; they were just passing that spot, where a too-playful youkai had once backed him up over the railing. He knew that wasn't really the reason, but it was a chance to back out before he let on too much. Falling into water was safe enough to say — innocuous as his dreams went — but there was no way he could tell them the rest.

* * *

_It was the same dream again. Not the ones Takashi usually had, the nightly ghosts from the past, but lately it had always been the same. He was running through darkness. Something was behind him; he didn't know what, but he had to get away. This time he felt the weight of a backpack on his shoulders, and he tried not to slow up as he wrestled his arms out of the straps. It crashed to the ground behind him, and he put on a burst of unencumbered speed, but he knew what came next..._

_One of his pounding feet landed on nothing. The sense of falling gripped him, then cold water struck him and swallowed him. He struggled for the surface, but the instant he got his face above it, the current snatched him downward in a cascade just high enough to throw him under again. His mouth filled with water — he was drowning —_

_"Natsume! __**Natsume!**__ "_

_Nyanko-sensei's voice gave him enough of a hold to pull himself awake, and he came up off his pillow gasping for air._

_The lucky cat was there waiting for him. "That dream again."_

_Takashi nodded breathlessly._

_He didn't even know when the recurring nightmare had started. At first he had thought nothing of it; the falling sensation had roused him for a moment and he had quickly fallen asleep again, just noticing the sense of deja vu as if this had happened before and been forgotten by morning. A few nights later he began feeling himself hit the water, which jarred him more rudely. Little by little, the dream had grown longer and more detailed — tonight it had added the backpack — and now, more frighteningly, it was getting harder to wake up from._

_"This is getting serious," Nyanko-sensei told him. "Your spiritual energy is always unstable when you're having your bad dreams, but this one is pulling it much too low. Something's causing it."_

_His breath paused for a moment. "What do you think it could be?"_

_"Hmm..." Sensei scratched his painted whiskers, then paced around Takashi and sniffed him embarrassingly. "Well, we should have noticed something by now if you were possessed. Maybe you picked up a curse somewhere."_

_Takashi couldn't think how that would have happened but admitted to himself that he might not have noticed. "In the dream, something's chasing me. Maybe if I could see—"_

_Sensei bounced up and smacked him in the head with a paw. "Don't even think about it, moron! The more you see of that dream the more trouble you're getting into! Just leave it to me!"_

* * *

At school that day, the Math test came back decent but not impressive. He didn't want to say it — especially not in front of Nishimura, who worked harder for similar scores — but with all the youkai distracting him, when it came to schoolwork Takashi felt like he was hanging on by his fingernails. To think there'd been a time when he answered test questions wrong on purpose to avoid the attention of high marks, the jeers that his invisible people had told him the answers...

On the way home, the group included Taki and Tanuma. As they came to the bridge, Takashi tried to focus on anything but the water and ended up staring at the back of Tanuma's head. The thought crossed his mind of asking if his friend had felt any unusual presence lately, but he quickly brushed it aside. He didn't want to risk getting Tanuma involved in whatever was happening; besides, it was no use making him worry when there was probably nothing he could do.

Tanuma turned his head and noticed the gaze, and they exchanged awkward smiles. Takashi cast about for something else to look at.

He was keenly aware of the river for as long as he could see it, but he arrived home safely, and Touko welcomed him as usual. Nyanko-sensei, on the other hand, was nowhere to be seen; probably he was out investigating.

Takashi felt that dull pang. Of course he didn't want to do it to Tanuma when he knew so well how it felt, knowing that something was wrong and not having anything he could do. Sensei had told him to just stay out of it... He could at least take advantage of the quiet to do his homework and bury his worries that way; only occasionally, when his mind wandered, he looked up at the angle of the sunlight slanting into the room, checked out the window to see if Sensei was coming back, and wondered if he ought to go searching after all. _After dinner, if he's not back yet_, Takashi told himself.

When the afternoon sky had just begun to soften, he heard a breeze rustle across the yard, and a sudden chill gripped him. The same threatening gravity he felt from the river — _It's here!_ He scrambled back from his desk, ran downstairs and headed for the door. If whatever it was had come to the house—!

"Takashi-kun?" Touko's voice from the kitchen brought him up short. "Can you check that the door's closed? I feel a draft."

The door _was_ closed. He turned in a panic toward the kitchen and through the doorway he saw it: a robed figure so tall it had to hunch under the ceiling, looming over Touko with a hand on her shoulder. It noticed him and turned its face toward him — a high black hat, a white Okina mask with a long beard and a dissonant kindly smile. Takashi sprang forward and snatched at its robes, but his fingers went straight through and closed on nothing, like snatching at smoke.

A sudden alien sensation shot through him, like a tether snapping taut at an angle he'd never known existed — and then the cold water hit him. He was plunged into darkness and felt it close over his head —

"Takashi-kun? Takashi-kun!"

He found himself sitting on the kitchen floor and Touko shaking him by the shoulder. The Okina was gone. He looked around, but he couldn't see it or feel its presence.

"Are you all right?" Touko asked.

"Uh, yeah. I just slipped and I— it kind of stunned me." He picked himself up and headed for the door. "I'm going to go outside and get some air..."

"But dinner will be ready in about twenty minutes."

"Twenty minutes, got it!" he called as he slipped his shoes on and rushed outside.

That cliff-edge feeling was gone, but his mind was still in a whirl that he couldn't find his way out of; he wanted the air to clear his head but barely knew where he was going.

And then he realized: something was behind him.

* * *

Kaname had picked up an order for his father at the bookstore and was walking home when he saw Natsume coming toward him, running fast with his head down. With a shock, he realized that something must be chasing him — _And I probably can't even see it to help him_ — but he strained his eyes further down the path, if he could even catch its shadow...

As it turned out he could see it just fine, because it was Ponta.

"Natsume," he called, "why are you running away from your cat?" He could still be missing something...

Natsume cast a glance over his shoulder and skidded to a stop with a strange, wild look. "You can see him?"

Kaname was struck speechless. Before he could find his voice, Ponta caught up with them. "Idiot! Of course Tanuma can see me! What are you, half-asleep!?"

Natsume turned toward the cat, then back again with a blank look in his eyes. "...'Tanuma'...?"

"Natsume?" _He doesn't recognize me!?_

"Oh, good grief!" Ponta huffed, and launched himself at Natsume's head.

Natsume cried out in alarm and cringed, guarding his head with his arms, and Kaname suddenly realized what he was seeing. It wasn't just the look on his face; there was something strange about his posture, the tone of his voice — and now it fell into place.

_He's acting like a kid._

Ponta bounced off him and sent him tumbling into the grass beside the path, where he blinked and sat up and his gaze properly found Kaname at last. "Tanuma? What happened...?" he asked, looking around. "Was I acting weird?"

"Were you ever!" Ponta scolded. "Running away from your own bodyguard — are you stupid!?"

"It was like you had amnesia for a minute," Kaname said, offering a hand up. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm—" He suddenly froze.

The next instant Kaname was struck with such a sudden hard blow of a headache that his vision went blank. When it cleared, Natsume was staring past him, eyes wide with terror.

"**TANUMA!**"

An old man's voice rang out above his head — "_**At last I've found you!**_" — then a violent gust of wind...

* * *

"I'm home!" Natsume called as Kaname followed him in the door of the Fujiwaras' house.

Touko and Shigeru came out from the kitchen to meet them.

"Welcome home," Touko greeted. "Takashi— Oh, Tanuma-kun."

"Sorry I'm late," Natsume explained, "but I ran into Tanuma, and he wasn't feeling well. I know it's short notice, but would it be all right if he stayed with us tonight?"

"I'm sorry to bother you," Kaname added, bowing politely.

"It's fine with me," she said. "Have you had dinner yet?"

"No."

"Well, you're welcome to eat with us. I made extra thinking I'd pack lunches tomorrow..."

"I can buy my lunch, then," Shigeru offered. "But Tanuma-kun, are you sure you shouldn't get home if you're not feeling well?"

"No, I'll be fine, I just need some rest. Could I please use your phone?"

"Oh, yes, yes, do call your father!" Touko insisted.

Natsume and Shigeru went upstairs to get out the extra futon, and Touko showed him to the phone and set another place for him at the table while he made the call.

As he listened to it ringing, the feel of the receiver in his hand was strangely fascinating and intense, and he found himself stroking it a little with his thumb just to take in the sensation. It wasn't entirely his own doing — rather, someone was inside his mind looking, listening, _feeling_ over his shoulder. _It wasn't like this before, with the one who was looking for the mirror... Well, at least you're not sneaking around_, he thought toward it.

_Terribly sorry to trouble you, Young Man_, the Okina replied.

The phone picked up. "Hello?"

"Hi, Dad."

"Kaname. Is something wrong at the store?"

"No, I'm at the Fujiwaras' house. On the way home I wasn't feeling well and I ran into Natsume..."

"Oh. Should I come get you?"

"No — no, that's okay. They said I could stay here tonight. I'm sure I'll be fine in the morning, I'll just come home early and get changed for school."

"Well, all right then... Can I talk to Fujiwara-san?"

"Okay." Kaname looked up. "Touko-san? My dad wants to talk to you."

He handed over the phone and sat down at the table, listening to the now-halved conversation.

"...Oh, it's no trouble; he's welcome anytime... ...No, not at all. In a way it makes me happy, to tell you the truth; Takashi was so shy when he first came and now he feels like he can ask so suddenly... ...Is there anything I should call if...?"

Kaname tried to be surreptitious as he ran his fingers over the surface of the table, the dry grain of the guest chopsticks, the glazed stone edge of the pottery plate, feeling half as if he'd never known anything like them before. The sight and smell of the food, however — chicken _kara-age_ with rice, green salad, and sautéed vegetables — was only normal. _It's just my sense of touch, then?_

That was what he thought until Natsume and Shigeru got back, everyone sat down to eat, and he took his first bite of the _kara-age_. The crisp, delicate crunch of the surface and the burst of succulent flavor from the meat were so stunning that he had to stop and remember how to breathe around the morsel in his mouth.

_Forgive me!_ the Okina pleaded. _I can't eat, myself, you see. I always could smell these things and wonder what it was like to eat them, but this is... It's too incredible...!_

The taste moved the youkai to tears — tears which began rolling down Kaname's cheeks.

"Is it too hot?" Touko asked him.

He shook his head, managed to swallow, and fumbled for an excuse. "No, it's... it's just... We don't eat meat at my house, so..."

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize! You don't have to eat it, I can find something else!"

"No, no, I mean it's kind of special, um..." He dabbed his eyes with his napkin in utter defeat. "I'm sorry, I'm just really tired..."

"It's all right, take your time," Shigeru assured him.

The Okina seemed to find the embarrassed wash of heat in his face novel and interesting, too.

* * *

Takashi barely let himself taste the food, just cleared the plate as quickly as he could without looking impolite and pushed back his chair. "Excuse me, I have to straighten some things up in my room." He grabbed Nyanko-sensei and hurried out.

Bringing a threatening youkai into the house was the last thing he would have wanted, but he couldn't send Tanuma home to his father like that; he didn't want to take his eyes off him, either — not when it was so obviously affecting him over dinner, not when he could still feel that pull of danger — but he did need a moment to talk to Sensei alone. He stopped out of earshot of the kitchen, but where he could still see the doorway.

"I don't think you have to go investigating that dream anymore," he said softly.

"So it's that Okina, is it?"

Takashi nodded. "I saw it earlier and touched it, and for a second it was like I was in the dream again. 'At last I've found you'... Could it have been after Tanuma all along? There's no telling what his father might have purified by accident." But that wouldn't explain the dreams, or why it would have gone after Touko — he _really_ didn't like leaving the others alone with it and crept closer to try to see...

"Calm down. I don't feel that kind of malice from it." Sensei squirmed out of his arms and strutted off up the stairs so that he had to follow. "There is something strange about its energy, though. I'd almost say it's puffed up to look bigger than it really is, only..."

"'Only'...?" Takashi questioned — if Sensei didn't feel malice, then what was _he_ feeling?

"Nah, nevermind. It's nothing I can't handle. —More importantly, what was wrong with you back there!? Running away from me like that!"

"I don't really know," he admitted, following into his room and sliding the door shut. It had been such a bizarre break that he could hardly get his mind around it to remember it, let alone explain it, but there had been that sense of something behind him he had to escape from... "Maybe it was still from the dream, after I touched the Okina..."

"So you're a kid in that dream?"

"Huh?"

"You were acting like little rugrat before I snapped you out of it."

Takashi blinked at him, then remembered the backpack in the dream the night before — an elementary school backpack. "Yeah, I must be."

"Hmm..." Sensei rummaged in the bottom desk drawer, emerged with a box of Pocky and started munching. "Do you remember anything like that really happening?"

Takashi sighed as he stepped around the guest futon and let himself drop to a seat at his desk. It was the opposite problem; too many things had chased him when he was in elementary school, in memories he'd forced down into a worming compacted mass that he didn't want to touch. "There's no way I could pick out just one," he said. "Do you think it's after the Book of Friends? That might not be 'malice' exactly, depending on why it wants it..."

"Maybe. I've never seen it around here before but rumors have been spreading. Of course if its name was in the book it would make things easy."

"Could it be there?"

"Who knows?" Sensei snapped off another bite of Pocky. "Like I said, I've never seen it around here before, but even Reiko left her own backyard sometimes."

Since Takashi had seen its face, it couldn't hurt to check, but he had only just gotten the Book of Friends out of his school bag and begun to open it when he heard footsteps in the hallway and a knock at the door.

"Natsume?" It was Tanuma.

Takashi stuffed the Book back in such a rush that his bag flopped over on the floor. "I'll be right there!"

* * *

The vicariously-intensified dinner left Kaname deeply drained, and when he went up to Natsume's room he was more than ready to lie down and sleep.

"Thanks again," he said, looking up from the guest futon as Natsume set the alarm clock for him. "Sorry I got you mixed up in something..."

"Don't worry about it."

"He'd have gotten himself mixed up in it anyway," Ponta opined, the last stick of Pocky waving from his mouth.

_That's right_, Kaname thought. _This stuff happens to Natsume all the time..._

He was just about to say "good night" when Natsume spoke again. "Say, Tanuma?"

"Hm?"

"Have you been having any weird dreams lately?"

He considered it. "No, I don't think so. Why?"

"Oh, it's nothing," Natsume told him, averting his eyes and flashing an intentional smile.

Kaname looked at him — there was obviously more to it than that, but he hesitated to press the issue.

He felt the Okina shift soberly. _As I feared, we haven't much longer..._

_What do you mean?_

_Follow me, Young Man. I will tell you everything._

The Okina's presence in his mind grew heavy, weighing him down toward sleep. He rolled over and pulled the quilt up around his shoulders. "'Night."

"Sleep well," Natsume said.

"Don't let him eat you," the cat added.

* * *

Kaname first became aware of the white roar of a river in the distance, then the smell of wild running water, earth and cedar. His vision was near-total darkness, but gradually he realized that it didn't matter; he could see without light. His body felt strangely abstracted, and his viewpoint swayed dizzyingly high above the ground as he moved — toward home, he felt — up a sloping gravel road through the trees, under the cloud-swathed sky of a gentle autumn night.

_Okina-san?_

_Yes_, came the answer. _This is my memory of a place long since past..._

He heard footsteps on the path up ahead, and as he came closer behind them he found a young boy walking along, dressed in a hooded jacket and carrying an elementary school backpack, his eyes to the ground to find his way in the scant light.

The Okina's memory of recognition came to him. _This child... This child will return my name._

Kaname didn't have time to wonder what that meant as he saw — or maybe felt — a stream of continuity flowing from the boy through a space that wasn't really space until it reached...

_Natsume? This is Natsume?_

The boy looked back over his shoulder, and the glimpse of his face wiped away any doubt. He had the same overgrown flaxen fringe, his features were childish but already recognizeable, and that forlorn expression wasn't like Natsume now, but it seemed that at some time in the past he must have looked like that...

His eyes widened from sadness into fear as he saw that he was being followed, and he turned back to the path and quickened his pace. The Okina moved more quickly in turn to follow him; Kaname felt its innocent curiosity, but watched with a tightening of apprehension.

Natsume tripped on a tuft of grass and stumbled. In an instant the distance between them vanished and the Okina was standing directly over him.

"Young Master?"

He gasped and looked up at it, eyes wide, pupils full-round and black in the darkness. Then he screamed and ran.

He sprinted away through the dark, barely slowing to wrestle off the backpack. The Okina, following close behind, was distracted for a moment as the bag fell at its feet. When it looked up it saw a great outcropping of rock — _the_ rock, somehow — jutting out over the river, and Natsume running straight toward it.

"Young Master, stop! Come back!"

But he was too frightened to listen. Kaname, watching, felt the plunge inside himself as the younger Natsume vanished over the edge with a cry and a gut-wrenching splash. Faster than thought he was just above the water where the boy was struggling, reaching out with the Okina's arm until their desperate searching hands met —

And he felt nothing. Natsume's fingers closed on nothing, like snatching at smoke, and the water swept him away.

_I can't touch him — can't save him!_ Kaname recoiled, trying to pull away from the dream. _No no this can't be —_

"_**This shall not be!**_" The Okina's voice overtook him. "_**Young Master, I promise I will save you!**_" An unexpected power stirred from within it and exploded outward, catching up the drowning child together with the water, rocks, trees in an earthquake of that space that wasn't space, lifting all away into white emptiness...

And then Kaname was back in the mundane dark, with his face pressed against the pillow. He half rose and looked around to get his bearings in the not-quite-familiar room. Natsume was lying on the other futon beside his, but he shifted fitfully as if struggling in his sleep.

_Something's wrong..._ "Natsume!" Kaname started to reach toward him, but something stopped his hand.

Natsume suddenly sprang up, gasping and coughing like a drowning person who had just been pulled out of the water.

"Natsume! Are you okay!?"

"...Wha? Ugh... Yeah, I'm fine," he said, but at the same time he massaged his temple, suggesting a serious headache. "Sorry I woke you up..."

"Don't worry about it."

Natsume sighed and muttered something that sounded like "physician, heal thyself."

"What?" Kaname asked him.

"Mm... It's nothing..." He stretched out and settled in again, and turned onto his side, facing away. "'Night."

"'Night," Kaname replied numbly. He stared at his friend's back in the dark for a long moment. If he even thought about reaching toward him or saying anything to him about what he'd seen, something held him back.

_I'm sorry, Young Man, but you mustn't_, the Okina told him.

He didn't know if he should, anyway. As he he began to settle back in himself, he noticed Ponta sitting on the desk looking down at him with narrowed eyes; _It would actually be less creepy if they glowed like on a normal cat..._ He could feel the Okina in turn regarding the cat with suspicion, but all he could do for the moment was turn over to face the other way, pull the quilt up around his head and try not to think about being stared at.

When he closed his eyes, the room soon melted away, and he was back in the scene from the dream, the rock where the younger Natsume had fallen. Now he stood there in a peaceful forest scene, with the Okina seated on the rock facing him — it was so tall that its face was still a little above his.

"What happened back there — er, here?" he asked.

The Okina looked up at the sky; at that angle its kindly smile flattened into a more somber expression. "It happened just as you saw."

"But you promised you'd save him! How did you...?"

Kaname trailed off as the Okina gave him a quizzical look and a feeling as if he were asking a beggared question, but after a moment it let that slide past and set about to explain.

"Perhaps you have noticed that I cannot touch this kind of space," it said, spreading its hands apart to demonstrate. "I can only touch this kind

of space."

At the Okina's words, the world around Kaname rippled unsettlingly along a dimension that he had caught glimpses of in the dream but only now recognized — "Time! You have power over time!"

"Ah, is that what you would call it?" it said. "I only know that when I make or acknowledge a promise, I can open a place where it will be kept. That night, I saved the Young Master with such a promise, but..."

"But you still haven't kept it — so he's been having dreams about it. When I saw him earlier, it was like he was back in that time."

"Yes," the Okina admitted. "My power is reaching its limit."

"And if we don't do something, then Natsume will... be erased?" Kaname guessed. That was how it worked on sci-fi shows, and it sent a heavy chill through him. _The world changing so Natsume died back then, and the Natsume I know never existed..._

"No," the Okina corrected. "The pillars of fate that have been laid since then cannot be moved now, but his life does depend on that place, as if he were tied to it by a thread. Already he can feel it in the night when he is most vulnerable. If my power is stretched beyond what he can endure with the promise still unfulfilled, a night will come when he will never wake from that dream — and then that too would become a pillar of fate. If Death once claims its place, I have no power against it."

The horror of that sank down in Kaname's stomach with even greater weight; he imagined Touko calling Natsume down to breakfast and having to come upstairs to see why he wasn't answering...

"As you saw, it was not a thing I could do myself," the Okina said. "After it happened, I went to the humans' dwelling places in search of the Young Master, but he had disappeared. Ever since then, I have searched for him, and for the one who will help me keep my promise to him. I had hoped to find him before now, but... When a thread pulls taut, it becomes easy to find the other end of it..."

Kaname struggled to take it all in. "That's why you said 'at last' you'd found...?"

"Yes, indeed!" it brightened up with excitement and relief. "When I approached the Honored Lady of this house, I felt certain that she would have wanted to help me, but she couldn't hear my voice. Then when I saw you, Young Man, I knew that you were the one!"

He had half-realized it already, but to hear it directly drew him up straighter.

"So then, will you also promise to save him, in that place?"

"Of course I will!" It was no time to hesitate. The instant he had spoken, he vaguely felt something fasten around him in the Okina's other space — likening it to a thread... _I guess I'm tied up in it now, too..._

Only then did he let the dizziness of the commitment wash over him. After all, he couldn't say that the last time he'd run to Natsume's rescue in that jar incident had exactly gone well. He didn't even have any guarantee that the Okina was telling the truth. If it was a trick, he might have just made things worse — but it was more dizziness than real doubt; he already knew that he couldn't walk away...

"Good, you take your promise very seriously, I can feel it," the Okina said. "But now I should tell you, there is a small dilemma as to how we should proceed..."

_You really should have told me something like that before you made me promise_, Kaname thought, although he knew it wouldn't have made any difference. "What kind of dilemma?"

"We cannot go there now. I am too weary, and we are too near to the Young Master," the Okina explained. "I fear he suffers more if I am near him or touch him, and when I showed you the memory, you saw how he was caught up in it. To make the journey in his presence would be far too dangerous for him, but there is also danger in leaving him alone."

"He might collapse and we wouldn't know?"

"He might think to himself and remember me. He does not yet know that he has seen me before. If he tries to recall what happened, he will be pulling against that place directly, and that would also be very dangerous for him.

"Even if he doesn't remember, he might send me away from you, or even away from this world," the Okina said. "He has that power."

"But Natsume wouldn't do something like that," Kaname protested.

"Oh? He seemed quite displeased with me for troubling you. As matters now stand, he could even do it without meaning me any harm."

"How?"

"He owns my name," the Okina said.

Kaname remembered that first moment from the dream — _"This child will return my name."_ He'd nearly forgotten it amid everything that happened afterward, but now... "What does that mean?"

"Some way back, further than the place I showed you, I wagered my name in a contest and lost it to a human named Natsume Reiko."

"'Reiko'?" That name had stayed in Kaname's mind ever since the incident at Omibashira's mansion: the name Ponta had mentioned then suddenly brushed aside. _Something I'm not supposed to know..._ He wanted badly to know, at the same time feeling that he shouldn't know if Natsume didn't want him to, but now maybe he _had_ to know...

"She was an ancestor of the Young Master," the Okina explained. "It seems she was quite famous for collecting spirits' names and gathering them together in a book known as the Book of Friends, which I believe is now in the Young Master's possession. A spirit's name in that book represents its very life; whoever owns it can command the spirit at will or even destroy it.

"...Have I spoken out of place?"

The sudden question gave Kaname a jolt as he stared off into the trees, stunned. "No, it's..." _Natsume has something like that?_ To think that his friend could enslave or kill youkai any time he wanted, and had never said anything about it... A moment's doubt flitted through his mind that he could be wrong, that Natsume could have kept it a secret because he _would_ do such a thing, but every moment he'd known Natsume had taught him better than that. Did he even know he had it? But why else would Reiko's name be such a secret? Of course it was always hard for him to open up, and he was always trying to keep his friends out of anything that could be trouble...

"He wouldn't do something like that," Kaname repeated, trying to shake off the unidentifiably-muddled feeling that clung to him.

"No, I believe he wouldn't," the Okina agreed. "But for a spirit's life to reside in that book has another side, also. Whatever else may happen, the spirit will remain in this world as long as its name exists there."

Kaname felt more than understood the significance of what it was saying and looked at the figure in front of him with new eyes. Its surface form was the same, but now he realized that it was only a shadow of the Okina he had seen in the memory; there were no more massive earthquakes of time hiding inside it.

"I left my home, and have spent most of my power to make this journey and hold my promise," it said. "If my name were not in another's hands, the strength I have left would not be enough to sustain me."

"And... you _know_ he's going to return your name," Kaname realized. "You knew that as soon as you saw him."

"Yes. I know that he will, but I do not know when. Perhaps we can only pray that it is not too near at hand..."

Kaname sank to a seat as he sifted through it and the implications revealed themselves. This youkai was saying that it had sacrificed its life to save Natsume, and it was still doing everything it could to save him knowing that he was likely to kill it, however innocently, and maybe it could survive itself if it just let him die. "Why... Why are you going that far...?"

The answering feeling it gave him was unexpectedly bemused. "You share my promise; surely you must understand. Well, perhaps because I've held the promise for him so long, even if I wasn't near him, I've grown attached to him in my own way..." The Okina tucked its chin, turning its smile brighter and more impish. "He is an adorable little creature, is he not?"

That wasn't quite how Kaname would put it, but it forced a grateful, awkward smile from him. "Yeah, I guess he is."

"It is true that I wish to regain my name, and I do not fear what may come after as a mortal creature might," it added, more seriously. "I am also obliged to make amends. I had seen such things happen, but never had I been the cause... Truly, though, one can hardly look at him and abandon him to such a bitter fate."

"No," Kaname agreed. That was certainly true.

Like exhaling a breath, the Okina let the melancholy reverie give way to the full sense of its exhaustion, and the scene of the rock, river, and forest faded away. "Well then, if we are in agreement, let us rest for the journey ahead."

Kaname felt it fall asleep, settling into an inert but obvious lump in the back of his mind.

_We're quite a pair, aren't we?_ he thought to himself. His own fatigue weighed him down so that even the agitation of everything he'd learned couldn't lift him out of it. He held on just long enough to hear Natsume breathing behind him before he, too, slid down into slumber.

* * *

But it was an unquiet sleep. Whenever its drift brought Kaname near the surface, the churning revelations and dangers needled him, and he had to half wake up and reassure himself again with the sound of Natsume's breath before he could sink back into something restful. He lost count of how many times it happened before he came up feeling a pale light beyond his eyelids and pulled himself up and opened his eyes.

The room stood in the diffuse blue of pre-dawn. He looked up at the clock — twenty minutes before they'd set the alarm. _No point going back to sleep now..._ But he didn't want to wake Natsume, either.

He quietly looked around. Ponta was nowhere in sight. Natsume had at some point rolled over toward him; his sleeping face was indistinct in the dimness, like a picture just vaguely smudged in but with every hazy shape arranged in a perfect image of peace. The feather-shadows of his eyelashes didn't even twitch. His heedless breath was the only sound.

It could come upon him just like that, and he might never wake up... Kaname couldn't even tell him the danger he was in and risk reminding him of what had happened...

Kaname folded his arms over his pillow and settled his chin on them to sort through it all again — and then Natsume's school bag caught his eye, slumped over awkwardly beside the desk. It struck him as odd to see it like that, and he realized that he had heard it fall over. When he'd knocked on the door, he'd heard the rustle like rummaging in a bag, and then the _flump_ alongside Natsume's footsteps as he came to the door.

_Why didn't he just say "come in"?_

Something he wasn't supposed to know about... The Book that could keep his friend from being saved... Kaname crept closer and reached for the flap of the bag.

At the shuffling sound of the futon and quilt, Natsume drew a sharp breath. Kaname hastily sat back as he raised a hand to his face, opened his eyes and levered himself up from the pillow. "Unngh... You're awake? What time is it?" He looked up at the clock and gave a bleary, comprehending moan.

"Sorry. I was having trouble sleeping." Kaname said.

"The Okina?"

"Kind of..."

Thinking of the Okina, Kaname felt that it was still there as that lump in the back of his mind — still asleep. There was nothing stopping him from speaking now. It might be dangerous to remind Natsume of what had happened, but surely it would be safe to say that the Okina had something it needed to do for someone before it got its name back, just offhandedly as if he were talking about someone else. Surely that would be better than sneaking into something Natsume didn't want him to know about...

"Um..." Kaname began hesitantly, "...it said something about a book—"

Natsume gasped; his eyes snapped wide and his voice pulled tight. "What... What did it say?"

Against that look of cold terror, Kaname instinctively retreated. "I... don't really know, I didn't understand it... Excuse me..." He got up and headed for the door.

Thankfully he'd visited enough to know where the bathroom was, but that wasn't the only reason he needed to escape. _Aargh, that didn't work!_ He should have realized from the start what he was up against, but he hadn't, and now he had to decide if he could do it...

On the way back, he was still trying to get his bearings when Natsume passed him in the hall.

"...I'll be right back..."

"Okay." When Kaname heard the bathroom door close again behind him, he hurried back to the room, and his eyes went straight to the school bag beside the desk — it was standing up straight again. Natsume must have just now checked inside it. That had to be where the Book of Friends was, if he just hadn't moved it.

Talking to him hadn't worked, and Kaname didn't have time to pretend that he could make it work. He might only have a minute before Natsume got back, and he checked again that Ponta wasn't there watching...

* * *

When Takashi came out of the bathroom, Tanuma was already there in the hallway; he even had his father's books in the shopping bag tucked under his arm. Looking at him this morning, it hardly seemed that he was possessed at all, but he was still understandably nervous.

"You're leaving already?" Takashi asked him.

"Yeah, I may as well get home..."

"Will you be okay?"

"I think so."

"You might want to call in sick today," Takashi suggested as he walked his friend to the door. He wanted as many of their schoolmates as far away from that Okina as possible, but it wasn't up to him...

"Yeah, I probably will stay home," Tanuma agreed.

"I'll come over after class and hopefully we can get it sorted out."

"I hope so..."

Tanuma was putting his shoes on at the door when Takashi suddenly felt that sense of dread pull at him again and knew that the Okina had started moving. Tanuma must have felt it, too; he paused for a moment, but then quickly pressed forward.

"Well, I'm heading out. Thanks again."

"Take care." Takashi waved and watched him go, and still stood looking out into the dew-sweetened air even after he was out of sight. There was no excuse to keep him here any longer, but still, sending him home like that...

He was just about to close the door when he saw Nyanko-sensei waddle purposefully past the gate in the direction Tanuma had gone. That was enough to put his mind at ease, and when he went back up to his room, he reset the alarm clock for the usual time and went back to bed.

続く…  
_to be continued..._


	2. The Painted Wolf

**Seven Year Promise**

by Fox in the Stars

based on _Natsume Yuujinchou_  
by Midorikawa Yuki and Brain's Base

* * *

**Chapter Two: The Painted Wolf  
**

Kaname had known exactly when the Okina woke up. At the Fujiwaras' door he had slipped his first shoe on in too much of a nervous rush to register any sensation from it, then the second had been exquisite in its texture and snugness. When he let the Okina understand why he was so mindful of what he was carrying in the bookstore shopping bag, it had answered him with a cool wash of relief, but then the moment had passed and its curiousity about the tight fluttering feeling in his chest had made it that much harder to stay calm as Natsume stood there watching him.

Now that he'd gotten as far as walking along the river without Natsume running after him or any angry gods striking him dead, the hard edge of fear began to soften a little in the rose-gold rays of sun so newly dawned that they seemed to slant upward, the babbling of the water rising up from its basin of lingering shadow...

Up ahead, he saw some small figures gathered in the shade of the bank. At first he wondered what a group of children were doing there so early, but as he came closer they looked more alien, with limbs too spindly, bodies too round — and beaks. _Kappa!_ he realized with a thrill, but he tried his best not to look at them. Of course he knew the stories, how they could drag people into the water and how you were supposed to bow and make them spill the water from their heads, but confronted with them now he just hoped they would ignore him if he pretended he couldn't see them.

_Don't be frightened. I won't let them harm you_, the Okina assured him.

_You're letting me see._ Like before, when the one with the mirror had briefly let him see that world, the way Natsume saw...

_I suppose it never occured to me to do otherwise. Should I not?_

_No, I didn't mean—!_ he answered hastily. _...Thank you._

He still avoided eye contact with the kappa. As he came close to them their heads snapped up, but they were looking up the path behind him.

"It's the pig-cat again!" one of them exclaimed, and in an instant they all vanished into the water.

Kaname let his breath out. If he was careful to filter out his own footsteps, he could hear something padding heavily along behind him. _Yeah, that wasn't exactly the perfect crime, was it...?_ He was about to turn around and explain as best he could — what else was there to do? — when the Okina stopped him.

_Young Man, will you promise to put that book somewhere very safe?_

_Of course._ Keeping it safe was his plan, after all, and he might need the help later — obviously it was asking so that it could use its power — but with Ponta? The one who was always protecting Natsume and helping him? _I don't think it'll come to that, though._

_Oh...?_

Again he could feel the Okina's mistrust of the cat, but it was no longer limiting his movements. He glanced over his shoulder to be sure — yes, there was Ponta — and stopped and turned around. "I'll give it back as soon as I can, I promise," he said. "I won't do anything with it."

The cat stopped too and faced him. "Oh? Then what's the point of taking it in the first place?"

"This youkai has something it has to do, and it needs Natsume not to give its name back until then. There's a reason he can't know about it yet — but it's trying to help, really." The whole story was too complicated, but... _I sound like a complete sucker, don't I?_

Ponta regarded him keenly. "That would explain why I haven't felt any malice," he allowed. Then his eyes sharpened, and Kaname could feel them looking straight through him to the Okina. "It would also be a good trick to play on a naive human and get your hands on something powerful — even if you're just too weak to make any impression."

Kaname began to protest, but his mouth wouldn't move; he recognized the sensation from the time he'd been possessed before — being lightly but decisively pushed back from the surface of his own body as the Okina rose to the challenge. He half-felt, half-watched his own face fall into a gentle, sagely, laughing-eyed smile.

The Okina chuckled with Kaname's voice. "I'm nearly used up, but I'm not _that_ weak yet." It drew the Book of Friends from the shopping bag and held it in front of Kaname's chest with both hands, feeling every fiber of the vintage paper under Kaname's fingers. Its suspicious glances and hinted mistrust surfaced in full form: "Is this what you really want, Master Kitty?"

Ponta "harrumph"ed, nose in the air. "That's none of your business."

"Perhaps not," the Okina admitted. "I have no desire for such a thing. But perhaps it would be safer where the likes of you could never find it. If I so chose, could you stop me?" It fixed the cat with an intense gaze.

"You just try me, Old Man," he answered, bracing himself.

"If you insist."

_No, don't-!_ Kaname saw what was coming, but the Okina paid no heed to his objections. He could only watch helplessly as the book in his hands

vanished.

Ponta's eyes snapped wide. He started back, and with a _boom_ a cloud of dust rose around him — as it had once before, at Taki's house when he disappeared —

This time, he didn't disappear, and Kaname was suddenly staring into the teeth of a giant white wolf, its face lowered level to his, green-gold eyes flashing with rage amid its red markings. He recoiled in terror — but his body didn't move a muscle. The Okina was still mercifully in control and didn't even blink or waver in its calm smile.

"_**WHERE IS IT!?**_" the beast roared.

"I don't know," the Okina replied.

A flash of teeth — "_**DON'T SCREW WITH ME, OLD MAN!**_"

"Truly, I don't know, but I'm certain to find out if you'll only be patient." The Okina reached out a hand and, incredibly, ran one finger down the wolf's muzzle — while its lips crinkled as if suppressing the urge to bite that hand off. "In the mean time, please calm yourself. You're frightening the Young Man."

Being brought into it sent a shock through Kaname where he floated in the back of his own mind. It was all so unreal he didn't know how to connect himself to it, didn't know how to connect "Ponta" to the thing in front of his eyes...

Its lip curled tighter. "What do you want with that boy?" it snarled.

"He told you himself," the Okina replied. "I need his help to keep a promise I made to the Young Master."

The wolf gave a sniff. "That brat is not my Master."

"I never said that he was." The Okina started walking down the path again; it turned its back, but still paid close attention to the energy behind it.

Kaname numbly allowed it to carry him along. He was still stunned, but there had been something in what the wolf just said, something gruff and petty but... patient? Like it really could be Ponta after all...

As if his thoughts had been heard, another _boom_ sounded behind him, and then it was the fat lucky cat ambling along beside his right ankle.

"What kind of a promise was this?" Ponta asked, his eyes still sharp.

"I don't believe that's any of your concern," the Okina replied.

"Fine, be that way. But I'm not leaving you alone until I get it back."

"I will see it returned to its rightful owner, you have my word."

As the two youkai walked side by side, cold silence descended between them like a wall. Kaname had a vague urge to apologize, to admit that the book vanishing was his fault, but the impulse was too timid and confused to stand a chance against that barrier.

_Please forgive me, Young Man._ He startled again as the Okina addressed him directly. _I provoked this creature knowing to expect something of that kind, and I should have prepared you for it._

_Would have been nice_, he replied, but it was unfelt reflex. After as long as he'd felt Ponta's shadow, after the weight of it that night at Taki's house, he might have known himself, and he didn't think that anything could have prepared him for that. Natsume's "Nyanko-sensei" who was always with him was really that... that monster... And Natsume had that Book that could control or kill youkai. Maybe that _was_ what he — or _it_ — really wanted...

_Yes, I'm certain that Master Kitty is only one of many spirits who wish to possess the Book of Friends_, the Okina said.

_And everything that wants it comes after him..._ Kaname realized, with a shudder of dread. But Ponta was always protecting him; at Taki's house, that monster was what had protected them...

_Of course he wants to guard his prey against any who might steal it away from him_, the Okina argued. _His tactic may be more honeyed than most, or perhaps he finds it amusing for now, but someday he might lose patience. The Young Master will return my name, as you recall, and then Master Kitty's prize will be that much diminished. How much of that will he tolerate?_

Kaname was staggered. It couldn't be true, but once pointed out, it seemed inescapable. Why was such a powerful youkai following Natsume around? He'd never been told. And he'd never been told about the Book. From there it was tempting to pull the two together in that spiral of logic...

And he'd never been told anything, so he had nothing to point to and say _no it's not that, it's this..._ Searching his experience of "Ponta" for some counter-argument was useless; the images were all eclipsed by that snarling wolf-monster, something one could easily imagine "guarding its prey"...

_Excuse me, Young Man._

The Okina nudged him forward again, into his own skin, and he blinkingly found that it had brought him home. He stood there staring at the temple until his father opened the door.

"Welcome home, Kaname."

"Ah, I'm home," he answered, trying to clear his head.

"Is that Natsume's cat?"

"I'm his Sensei!" Ponta corrected, although to Kaname's father it must have sounded like a "meow."

"Uh, yeah, he... He followed me..."

"Oh, I see. He wanted to make sure you got home safely. How responsible."

"Don't you patronize me, Baldy," the cat objected, but when Kaname's father bent down and scratched him behind the ears, he leaned savoringly into his hand. "Just a little to the left... Ooh, right there..."

Kaname caught his breath but could only watch in speechless dread; there was no way he could tell his father just what he was skritching...

"I... got your book," he managed, offering the bag.

When his father rose to take it, his smile fell, and he lay a hand on his son's forehead. "Kaname, are you all right? You're shaking."

"Oh, uh, yeah I guess I am..."

"Do you think you'll be able to go to school today?"

"No, I... I'd better not try it..."

"Should I call the doctor?"

"No, no, I'm sure I'll be okay, just..." He could blame poor sleep, maybe, but it died away on his tongue. There were already things he hadn't told his father about, but part of him didn't want to start inventing excuses, _...and end up like Natsume..._

His father considered him. "All right, but if you aren't feeling better by tomorrow..."

"Yeah, that's a good idea," he agreed. _It should all be done with by tomorrow..._

_Yes, when you've calmed enough, we can go back to that place_, the Okina agreed.

_Calm, you say..._ After it was the one who had told him all that...

_Is it not better to know the truth?_

He couldn't argue.

Kaname went back to his room with Ponta following at his heels. Without even switching on the light, he let himself curl up on the floor and hid his face in his folded arms. _Okay, I have to calm down now..._ But he could feel the cat moving around the room, coming right up beside his head...

When Ponta tapped him on the ear with a paw, he jumped despite himself.

"Good grief," Ponta scolded. "Don't let that old geezer get to you. It was about time you knew what a handsome, dignified creature I really am, anyway."

"Handsome" and "dignified" were not words Kaname would have used. The tone they'd been spoken in felt like an offer of solid, familiar ground, but he couldn't bring himself to reply.

"We'll get the Book back somehow," the cat added. "I had a promise with Natsume first, you know. The nerve of that geezer — as if I'd walk off with it just like that."

_It's not true that he had a promise with the Young Master __**first**_, the Okina insisted, uncharacteristically piqued.

While it was distracted, Kaname spoke too suddenly for it to stop him: "It was my fault."

"Hm?" Ponta looked at him, surprised but not angry.

The Okina didn't want him to talk and wrapped itself around him protectively, but he couldn't just leave it at that. He hunched his shoulders, tightening in on himself to hold it off just for a little. "I said I'd put it somewhere... That's why..."

"_You_ did? Well, where'd you put it?"

"I didn't... yet..." That had to sound bizarre, but explaining it was utterly beyond him.

"Why does the old man need _you_ to do it, anyway?"

Kaname couldn't say any more.

"Hmph. I guess he really is too weak to do anything by himself."

_What presumption!_ the Okina huffed.

"Well, that's no problem then," the cat declared, not hearing it. "If he can't do anything without you, then as long as I can keep you safe, everything will be fine."

_As long as you can keep me safe..._ Kaname echoed to himself. Did that mean offering protection, or did it mean "guarding his prey"...?

A silence settled over the room that lasted a few minutes.

"How long are you going to sit here in the dark, anyway?" Ponta finally burst out. "Vitamin D — _you_ need all of it you can get." With a rumble, he pushed open the doors that faced onto the yard, letting in the morning sunshine and the cool breeze that sighed through the leaves outside.

Kaname raised his head and blinked into the light. At this time of morning, the temple cast a long shadow in that direction, but enough sun seeped in around it to flood the room, and even within the blue-darkened shape it projected on the grass, in a certain spot there was a wavering sheen of light —

_The pond!_ Without even thinking, he got up and went out to stand on the verandah and look at it. For so long, he'd watched its shadow; even when the youkai with the mirror had lent him her eyes, he hadn't had the chance to look, and now here it was at last. A thin, pale purple glaze of reflected morning sky coated its surface, shattering and healing as each ruffle of breeze broke through to depths of shaded indigo — with here and there a clear vermilion glimpse of the fish. One of them jumped into the air with a gulping splash and a flash of luxuriant fins; it was bigger than he had imagined, but it was beautiful.

Now it was the Okina's turn to wonder at how deeply Kaname felt something that seemed so ordinary. Ponta gave him a canny look as if he'd known exactly what he was doing in opening up that view.

_And Natsume could see it all along_, Kaname recalled.

The thought went down deeper than he'd anticipated. Not only the pond, but also the giant red-painted wolf with its flashing teeth — Natsume had been able to see that all along. At Taki's house, he'd called out to it without a moment's hesitation. When he carried Ponta in his arms or argued with the cat in a way he hardly trusted any human except maybe Nishimura to be argued with, he knew exactly what he was doing, and he always had.

Surely it couldn't be a trick, not for this long, not when Ponta couldn't even play innocent for the walk home to the temple. And Natsume had known about the Book all along, too — he must have; he'd been the one to hide it and double-check for it. He had to know better than anyone the ulterior motive that could be there, but he wasn't afraid, which meant that he trusted this cat — and that monstrous wolf — completely.

...Or he just didn't care if it ate him. The part of Kaname that was always afraid for him couldn't help but ask the question; he was always getting mixed up with youkai so recklessly, like whatever they wanted was more important than he was...

But even as Kaname thought it, the dread was breaking up inside him and lifting away. The worry was real, but it wasn't everything. Searching his memories of Ponta for proof of sincerity had been useless, but turning to Natsume for proof that he was deeply, truly _alive_, too much to hand himself over without complaint... It came in such a flood that he could scarcely pick out one image from the others: a rare flash of temper, a shaky but genuine smile, the first time they'd spoken — Kaname had offered that the shadows in the schoolyard were probably his imagination, because even if Natsume could see them he probably didn't want to talk about it, but then he had said "I see them" with something quiet and unnameable in his voice reaching out wanting to meet what might come next...

The sense of the Okina pulling him closer brought Kaname back to himself. _Young Man, shall we go now?_

_Yes_, he answered. That was Natsume, he was sure of it, that quiet, awkward reaching out toward life, and whatever it took he wasn't going to let it be snatched away like that — in the Okina's memory, that desperate reaching hand...

The power he'd felt in that memory stirred, no longer like an earthquake but still dazzling.

Ponta saw it and leapt up. "What are you doing!? STOP!"

The Okina cast the cat a still-mistrustful glance, and then it pulled Kaname with it into its other space — like plunging into water; suddenly time was everywhere streaming around him. He felt himself pushed back from the surface again and his body stepping down from the verandah and across the yard. The Okina wasn't moving quickly at all, but this was the incredible speed he'd seen from it earlier — walking through the streams and not the air of normal space. As Kaname tried to see past it, the wind-ruffles on the pond inched across it almost frozen. Ponta moved slowly as a statue just trying to come to life, too slow even to follow Kaname with his eyes.

The Okina meant to leave him behind.

_No!_ With all his will Kaname pushed past it, trying to seize control and fight the current. _Whatever it takes to save Natsume_ — the Okina protested but he didn't listen; he reached back toward Natsume's Nyanko-sensei, the one Natsume always trusted to save him — _I want your help I want anything that will help —_

The world was coming back to life, only a little but enough for Ponta's eyes to find him. The boom of dust as he transformed unfurled like a time-lapse of a flower, and Kaname saw the painted wolf again, leaping forward in slow motion. As its teeth bore down on him he squeezed his eyes shut but stood his ground and kept reaching out his hand...

He felt its hot breath; he felt those teeth close on his arm. They held fast but didn't sink in as he lost his hold and was whisked away, deeper and deeper into that streaming other space —

Then everything was still, and he was floating, not even needing to breathe, in a visible darkness perfumed with running water and cedars.

He was back in the Okina's memory, but now it wasn't a dream or a memory, it was real and he had to know what was happening at this exact moment. Wolf-Ponta was there, teeth still gripping now-the-Okina's sleeve; the school backpack was on the ground at his feet; the younger Natsume was still running. His shoes rang out sharper as they hit the rock, not soil — then the cry, the splash, and it wasn't a dream —

_**Natsume!**_ Kaname cried, but he had no voice; it was all upside down and he was just a shadow in the back of the Okina now —

But the name did burst forth into the air as Ponta whipped his head around, jaws slack, gold eyes stricken. "_**NATSUME!**_" He sprang into the air.

The Okina rushed forward as well but even it was suddenly watching in awe as the wolf arced overhead in a flourish of white windblown fur, unerringly dipped his muzzle in the rushing water, and leapt back to the bank carrying the boy in his mouth as carefully as a real wolf might carry its cub.

The younger Natsume couldn't possibly know what was happening. He coughed and gasped, and trembled where Ponta placed him on the ground. When the wolf nuzzled him behind his head and blew a hot breath down the back of his neck, it made him jump with fright, but the Okina knew — and the knowledge filtered through to Kaname — that it was meant to infuse energy into him, and indeed he stopped trembling and breathed easier.

"_**You little idiot!**_" Ponta roared, as angrily as any parent who'd been given a scare. "What were you thinking, running through the dark!? Have you _always_ been this reckless!?"

"Ah! S- sorry!" the boy stammered.

The Okina stepped through time to fetch the backpack and savored the rare moment of physical weight in its own hands before proffering it. "Terribly sorry to have frightened you, Young Master. I meant no harm, I assure you."

"Th- thanks." He took the bag, hands still shaky.

"Now _go home!_" Ponta commanded. "Dry yourself off before you catch one of those coughs of yours."

"Yes, you really must hurry home," the Okina agreed.

The younger Natsume stared at the ground, but his tone brightened a little. "Um, okay." He shouldered his backpack, got to his feet, and with a few glances back as if to make sure they would really let him go, he hurried away up the path.

"Careful! I'm not pulling you out of there again!" Ponta called after him. When the boy was out of sight, he turned to the Okina. "Was _that_ what all this trouble was about?"

"Yes," it replied. "My promise to the Young Master was to save him in this place. —But, Master Kitty," it used the name more reverently than before, "I had thought that only one who shared my promise could return here with me."

Ponta gave a grand, disdainful sniff. "The promise I made with Natsume wasn't anything as half-assed as that."

"Perhaps it wasn't," the Okina admitted, with its brighter, tucked-chin smile. It had seen Ponta's face when he called Natsume's name and admitted too that that had not been the look of even the most patient predator.

Kaname had watched the entire scene unfold from behind the Okina. Now, as its suspicions dissolved and its promise was kept at last, its deep relief and satisfaction washed over him but didn't quite soak in. He'd been ready to try so hard, but in the end he had only been there to give the Okina physical substance, and even that hadn't been needed at all. It would be stupid to feel snubbed; if Natsume was safe, that was all that mattered — but...

He looked up the path where the boy had gone. Natsume didn't like to talk much about his past, but he'd said enough — and Kaname had seen enough in his younger self's face — to know that they were letting him go into a lonely, frightening place. _"The pillars of fate that have been laid since then cannot be moved,"_ the Okina had told him; he knew he couldn't rescue his friend from whatever he had already been through, but the thought of leaving him alone here tightened in Kaname's stomach. Somehow it didn't seem right at all...

_You did very well, Young Man!_ the Okina told him. _Now we must get you home as well._

It was unearned praise, and it brought him no joy. He didn't want to go back and leave Natsume like this.

But the uneasiness was nothing he could point to directly or put into words, nothing focused enough to resist the Okina as it lay a hand on wolf-Ponta's head and pulled them both back with it through the streams of time.

* * *

On the way to school that morning, Takashi had to excuse himself and tell Nishimura and Kitamoto that he'd catch up to them later — some kappa had accosted him to complain that Sensei was harassing them and beg him to make "the pig-cat" leave them alone. At least he could tell them not to worry, that it was taken care of; when Sensei had been looking into that drowning dream, he supposed, kappa would have made natural suspects, but now they knew better.

It wasn't until he was sitting in homeroom that he noticed: the mysterious sense of threat from the river had disappeared. He'd gone right down to the edge of the water talking to the kappa and hadn't felt it at all.

He didn't see Tanuma at school. During the first class-change, Kitamoto confirmed that he was out sick for the day, but with Tanuma, no one gave that much thought, and Takashi was more relieved than worried. This way kept the strange youkai further from the others, and with Sensei keeping an eye on things, surely it would be all right.

At lunch, Nishimura's eyes widened when Takashi opened his _bento_ with the leftover _kara-age_. "You're not seriously going to eat that in front of me, are you?" he pleaded, clutching his usual boughten bread pathetically.

"One piece," Takashi allowed.

While Nishimura was agonizing over which nugget of chicken was his favorite, Kitamoto came in and pulled up a chair beside them. "Do you guys want to go check on Tanuma after school?"

"Sorry, cram school. Taking him his homework?" Nishimura guessed.

"Yeah."

Takashi hurried to swallow the rice he'd been chewing. "I'll take it to him. I was going there anyway, you don't have to," he insisted.

"Well I kind of want to see how he's feeling," Kitamoto said.

"But he might be contagious, you know."

"Oh, come on," Nishimura argued. "It's probably just the anemia acting up."

"No, I, uh—" Takashi fumbled. "I ran into him yesterday evening and he was coughing. I'll check on him and then if it's okay, tomorrow's Saturday, we can all go."

"Well, okay..." Kitamoto hesitantly agreed and got the homework papers out of his bag. "I'll give you the rest after school."

"Thanks." Takashi picked his own bag up into his lap and shuffled through it for a good place to put them.

A plunging shock shot through him. The Book of Friends was gone.

The Okina had been after it; it had even said so to Tanuma. It must have taken it, but when? Where? Could it be _here?_ Had he seen the Book since he came to school? No, he'd just pulled out his notebooks without really looking. The last time he'd seen it was when he checked that morning, and then he'd felt so sure that it was just Tanuma he was talking to; it would have been more suspicious to try to smuggle it into the bathroom; he'd only turned his back for a minute — but that must have been enough, and if the Okina had the Book of Friends even Sensei might not be able to handle it...

"Um, Natsume?" Kitamoto asked.

"Is there a spider in your bag or something?" Nishimura wondered.

"No, I, uh..." He looked up at the windows, trying to think which way faced toward the temple and half-expecting a mushroom cloud. The absence of any overt sign was no relief; it only meant he didn't know... His friends were staring at him and he had to say something...

Kitamoto leaned into him; "Natsume, are you okay? Seriously, you just turned white all of a sudden."

"Yeah, I'm... I just saw I forgot something that's due today and I need to go back and get it," he blurted, jumped up from his chair and ran for the door. "Later!"

"But your lunch!" Nishimura called after him.

"You can have it!"

* * *

The Okina had brought Kaname home in time for breakfast. He'd still been distracted and uneasy as he weathered another storm of magnified flavors, but the apprehension had gradually faded amid the familiar sensations of home. It was done, and Natsume was safe: that really was all that mattered. After everything that had happened, he'd been ready for a nap as soon as he changed clothes and lay out the futon, and had drifted off in the back of himself, leaving the Okina chatting with Ponta and explaining everything.

It nudged him awake again when his father came to bring him lunch — rice porridge with _umeboshi_. Going straight for that kind of "get well soon" food... _This morning must really have scared him._ Kaname waited until his father left to eat it. The drowsy trepidation of staring down the whole pickled plum only piqued the Okina's curiosity more dangerously, but he thought it would be better to be done with it all at once, picked it up and put the bowl aside on a safely stable surface — _and after this I'll be either totally awake or passed out on the floor..._

When he was done seeing intensely sour, blazingly salty stars, he found that he'd split the difference: he was totally awake, on the floor.

"I would've been happy to eat that for you," Ponta informed him, standing over his face.

"Well, that wouldn't have made Okina-san so happy," he sighed as he blinked through the streaming tears. If this was his guest's one chance to experience such things, Kaname found that he actually wanted to indulge it.

_Thank you, Young Man, thank you..._ the Okina sobbed.

He picked himself up, put on a light jacket, and took the rest of the porridge with him out into the yard. On a whim, he dropped a spoonful in the pond and watched the red fish swarm around it as he sat down by the water's edge.

Ponta watched them too, more intently, and raised a predatory paw.

Kaname grabbed him by the nose. "Don't you do it."

"Hmph!" The cat shook free. "You're _just_ cutting school at this point."

"Well, if I told Dad 'oh, it cleared right up,' it'd probably scare him more. I was a mess this morning thanks to _someone_."

"You wanted to keep the old geezer away from Natsume, didn't you? You should be thanking me."

"You just don't want to admit you panicked back there," Kaname accused, perhaps getting a bit carried away.

"_Who_ panicked!?" Ponta demanded. "Do I look prone to panic to you!? You should talk, you hypocrite — you straw mushroom!"

"What does that last part even mean?"

If the cat intended to explain the insult, he was cut short by the sound of running footsteps approaching, and a moment later, Natsume tumbled into the yard out of breath. At the sight of the two of them sitting there, he stopped and fell to bracing himself on his knees, panting. "Tanuma... Sensei...!"

"Hey, Natsume," Ponta called. "I took care of it already, you can relax. Everything will be fine as soon as these two figure out where they put the Book of Friends."

"Yeah, I'm really sorry about that," Kaname said sheepishly. "It's kind of a long story." And with Natsume he needed to explain and confess it himself...

Natsume didn't even seem to hear, just crossed the yard to him with a huge sigh of relief, reached out an arm and collapsed toward him. "Thank goodness you're okay...!"

Kaname smiled and opened his mouth to speak, but the moment Natsume's hand landed on his shoulder, he felt time

_snap taut._

* * *

It was the same alien sensation as when he had touched the Okina in Touko's kitchen — as if he were tethered to some invisible, intangible pillar of stone, and then the darkness, the cold —

But it wasn't water. Bare cold sank into him like dull blades, down to the bone.

The support of Tanuma's shoulder was gone. He crumpled to the ground in the blackness, and the temple yard was gone; a carpet of fallen cedar needles prickled his hands. The scent of cedar enveloped him, mingled with the smell of wet soil — and rain. He heard a light rain pattering into the ground beside him, and it dawned on him that he was lying on the damp earth, nestled under a crag with his back against stone and his cheek resting on something smooth as leather — the backpack from the drowning dream.

He'd been shivering, he was sure of it. The cold didn't slice like winter cold, but it was enough, and now it had sunk in so deep that he wasn't even shivering anymore.

_This is bad. I'll freeze to death if I just lay here._ He willed his body to move, but it wouldn't. _I have to move! I have to get up — have to go back—!_

—Back to Tanuma and Sensei in the temple yard, back home to Shigeru and Touko and everyone, but when he reached for them in his mind, he touched worming horror instead, and the images that assaulted him were of youkai: hag-haired, grinning ones who liked lonely human children and knew where to find a lot of them cooped up together...

_The Children's Home? Why am I remembering that now!?_

But it was only the leading edge of something bearing down on him: another mind — another _Takashi_. He was looking at himself, and it reflected warped, horrible thoughts back to him like some other-dimensional carnival mirror.

_I have to get home!_

It returned, _I can't go back..._

_Touko-san! Sensei! Tanuma — __**everyone!**__ I want to see them—!_

And that mirror showed him, tucked somewhere in the backpack beneath his head, the lone photograph of his parents. _Maybe I can see them... That would be better..._

That other self pressed down on him more and more heavily; it was almost enough to crush him. "_**NO!**_"_ That was a long time ago!_ He couldn't even hear his own voice, but he fought it and cried out aloud with all his strength. "_**It's not like that anymore!**_"

* * *

Kaname desperately shook Natsume by the shoulders where he had curled up on the ground. "Natsume! _**Natsume!**_"

"What happened, Old Man!?" Ponta shouted.

"I don't know!" the Okina's words tumbled out of Kaname in a panic. "I don't know what could have gone wrong!"

Something had gone wrong. Something had _**been**_ wrong. Shot through with total knowledge of that and no longer distracted by the horror of watching his friend drown, Kaname could see it staring him in the face. _Why was he out walking in the dark? Why was he carrying his school backpack at night? He said he'd go home..._ But there hadn't been a house in sight.

"Natsume! Please wake up!" Kaname tried slapping his cheek — and his skin was cold. His eyes were open in a sightless, terrified stare.

_He said he'd go home...!_ Kaname seized on that moment, if he could grasp it and bring it to his eye and really see it — Ponta and Okina had told him to go home; he'd said _"okay"_ with his eyes to the ground, an odd lightness in his voice...

The averted eyes. A little flash of joyless smile. Kaname's jaw dropped.

_He was lying._

He hadn't been going home, and even on a mild night like that, outside for hours soaking wet he wouldn't make it...

Ponta was batting Natsume's head with his paws. "Hang in there, Natsume!"

No response.

Kaname turned to the Okina. _We have to go back!_

_But again, so soon — I haven't the strength!_ it protested, stricken and helpless.

_No no this can't—!_ His only chance couldn't be gone like this. _If I'd just seen it sooner... I didn't want to leave him, if I'd just been stronger...!_

"N-nuggh" Natsume moaned.

"Natsume!" Kaname snatched at hope that he was waking up.

He squeezed his eyes shut and curled himself tighter, struggling blindly to speak. "It's not like that anymore...! I don't... _I don't want to die...!_"

Kaname turned inside himself, seized the Okina and pushed it back on its other space with everything he had, not caring what it took — _**We are going back there NOW!**_

* * *

"_I don't want to die...!_" Natsume moaned.

His energy was being pulled away as it had been in his drowning dreams but on a dangerous new level — one that was beyond what Madara could deal with in the form of a silly cat. For the third time in half a day, he shook off that shell of clay and let his full power unfurl itself.

The dust of the transformation cleared just in time for him to see Tanuma collapse, limp and unconscious. _His_ energy had suddenly plunged almost to nothing, but the tiny glow that remained held safely stable. Getting no impression at all from the Okina, either, it wasn't hard to guess what had happened.

"You little fool," Madara grumbled. "You don't have enough power to throw it around like that."

Carefully, he plucked Natsume from the bottom of the pitiful human pile and heaved another revitalizing breath into him. He was still tensed and very cold, and Madara curled himself on the lawn, cradling the boy in the warm hollow of his own white-furred flank.

As for Tanuma, if the priest found him sprawled senseless in the grass like this it would make for an annoying scene, and he would do for a hot water bottle at any rate. Madara gently picked him up, too, and tucked him in where he could help keep Natsume warm and Madara's fur could hide them both from human sight.

There was nothing else to do but support Natsume and wait.

続く…  
_to be continued..._


	3. The Lost Child

**Seven Year Promise**

by Fox in the Stars

based on _Natsume Yuujinchou_  
by Midorikawa Yuki and Brain's Base

* * *

**Chapter Three: The Lost Child  
**

Kaname arrived already running up the gravel road in the direction Natsume had gone. He ran on and on but didn't see Natsume, or a house, or anyone at all until — after he didn't know how far — a small light came flickering through the trees.

It grew larger and brighter, and soon brought with it the buzz of a small engine. Kaname tumbled to a stop panting, muscles burning, and waved his arms to flag it down. The headlight dazzled him as it slowed and came to rest; in the lea of its glare was a motor scooter with a young man driving and a young woman hanging on behind him.

"Are you okay?" the driver called over the engine.

"Yeah, I'm fine, just..." He stumbled over a painfully dry swallow. "Who lives down his road?"

The two of them looked at each other. "Um, this is an old logging road," the woman told him. "It just goes up into the woods; nobody lives out here."

Kaname had been almost sure of the essential fact already but staggered back as it was confirmed and worse.

"Are you sure you're okay?" the man questioned. "You'd better head back. It looks like it might rain."

"Yeah. Yeah, thanks. Just go on ahead, I'll be fine," Kaname panted.

"Okay..." The young man sounded hesitant, but he revved the scooter and drove away.

Natsume didn't stand a chance — and if he'd seen the scooter's headlight and gone into the trees, it would be that much harder to find him...

_That machine..._ the Okina said softly. _I believe I saw it before I encountered the Young Master. This place is a little farther back..._

So Natsume hadn't come this way yet; there was still time to meet him on the path. Kaname half-collapsed in relief, still trying to catch his breath. He wasn't panting so hard now, but every breath came deep and rasped his dry throat.

Suddenly it occurred to him that when the Okina had brought him back here before, he hadn't needed to breathe. He'd just been a shadow in the youkai's body, and now he still had its eyes that could see in the dark, but they were looking down at his own hands braced on his knees. The couple on the scooter had even been able to see him.

_Yes. It is mostly by your power that we have made this journey_, the Okina admitted, _and so you've come more fully into this place than I might have wished..._

Kaname caught the note of worry, and a panic flashed through him. _If I'm breathing here, does that mean I'm not—?_ He could feel his heart pounding, too...

_No, I will return you safely, Young Man_, the Okina assured him. _Only you must make certain not to come to any injury here, or take any nourishment except clear water._

_Don't eat the food. Makes sense._ He didn't want to end up like Izanami or Persephone, although finding this out after running himself ragged, he was deeply grateful for the water allowance.

He started slowly back down the road, and as he walked, he found that he knew — without knowing how he knew it — exactly how far they were from the rock. When he saw the white streak of Ponta leaping through the air above the trees, he didn't need it to tell him where he was, but it did tell him when. Judging that he was close enough to the spot, he stopped under a tree beside the path, not wanting to risk alarming Natsume with the sound of footsteps.

A few minutes passed, then he heard the boy coming. Unable to see Kaname waiting for him in the dark, he came close enough to hear the water squelching in his shoes.

_There's probably no way to do this without scaring him_, Kaname admitted, but he had to try it anyway and stepped out onto the path. "Hi again."

The younger Natsume gasped and jumped back.

"Don't worry, I won't hurt you. I was the old man back there." Slightly true, and smoother than explaining how he was actually involved. He tried walking closer, alert for any sign that the boy was about to run away. "The wolf went on home. I just had to go and change," he said.

Natsume backed off, but only a little, and they came close enough for him to see Kaname and look him in the face. "Wh... Why...?"

"Because you know what my power is?"

Natsume tensed, and Kaname stopped and crouched, even below his eye level.

"I can see when you're lying," he said.

The boy jolted guiltily.

"You're not really going home, are you?"

He stared at the ground.

"Do you even know what's up this road?"

"N... not really..."

"Nothing," Kaname told him. No sense sugar-coating it: "If you go this way, you'll die."

Natsume snapped his head up and stared in reassuring shock.

Kaname straightened. "Now, where do you live?"

He stared at the ground again. If lying wasn't an option, silence still was.

"Who's taking care of you?" Kaname tried.

His gaze wandered, still downcast. "Nobody," he said quietly.

The averted eyes but no smile — he was biting his lip. With a sick feeling inside, Kaname knew that Natsume was telling the truth, at least as he saw it. But he didn't look ready to run anymore, and when Kaname took him by the shoulder he didn't resist.

"Come on, let's get you warmed up at least."

The boy quietly let himself be led back the way he'd come. Thinking of him as "Natsume" was getting uncomfortable, and "younger Natsume" was unwieldy, so Kaname mentally dubbed him "Takashi-kun."

And within minutes he felt "Takashi-kun" shivering under his hand. _Some hero I am..._ He didn't even know himself what was down this road the way he was walking, or where or how soon he could find somewhere safe and warm...

_Now, now, that's only a trifle_, the Okina interjected, and pushed Kaname back long enough to shepherd Takashi through the streams toward where the humans lived.

It seemed only an instant passed, and then they emerged on a street in town. The Okina had chosen it well; Kaname immediately saw a neighborhood bath house, and another block further down was an udon shop and a laundromat across the street from a convenience store.

_Thank you, Okina-san!_

The response from the back of his mind was only a wordless rustling. It may have been a trifle, but the Okina had been all but exhausted already, and now it collapsed into that inert lump to rest — which meant Kaname wouldn't be going home for a while, but this time he didn't intend to until he could see with his own eyes that he was leaving Takashi somewhere safe.

"There's your hot bath," he said, leading the way toward the bath house. "I don't know what we'll do while we're drying your clothes, but..."

"I have other clothes with me," Takashi volunteered.

Kaname blinked. "Oh. That works out well, then," he said with forced cheer, meanwhile thinking, _You __**what?**__ Oh, god, he really wasn't kidding..._

"But, um," the boy pulled on his arm. "They're not going to be able to see you."

"Oh, don't worry. That's my other power: I can impersonate a human really... really pretty well."

At least well enough to get them through the door, thoroughly washed, and then into the hot bath. The water did feel good, but "relaxing" was too much to hope for as Kaname tried to review the situation. _So "nobody" is taking care of him, and he even has a change of clothes with him..._ Still, he didn't get the impression that Takashi had been living on the street even briefly. It added up to the idea that he'd just run away from somewhere — which made "leaving him somewhere safe" that much more complicated. Even if he could get Takashi to say where he'd come from, it didn't feel right at all to return him just like that; he must have had some reason... _And we thought all we had to do was pull him out of the river._ That already seemed like ages ago.

"Aren't you boys out awfully late?" A strange voice snapped Kaname to attention; it was an elderly man sitting near them in the bath and looking at them with concern.

"Oh, yeah..." He had to say something... "We just meant to go for a walk in the woods, but we got kind of lost, and then my little brother fell in the water..."

"Your parents must be worried."

"They were. I called them already, but I wanted to get him in a hot bath as soon as I could."

Takashi didn't say anything, just stared at the spectacle of a human interrogating a "youkai."

"Sorry, he's kind of shy," Kaname said by way of excuse.

The old man seemed to accept the "little brother" story, but Kaname had to back off from the hot water to keep it from going to his head — he was keenly aware that the two of them looked nothing alike, and the mundane parts of the truth wouldn't sound good at all. _I show up here, a total stranger, grab a kid off the street and make him take his clothes off. Okina-san, please tell me you can get me out of here if the police show up..._

The Okina was still sound asleep, but maybe that was a good thing. The heady heat was enough just feeling it for himself, and the last thing he needed was to faint in the bath.

When they left the bath house, he put his own jacket on Takashi, and the air outside was chilly and heavy with damp. The udon shop had already closed, but luckily the laundromat and convenience store were open twenty-four hours, and Kaname led the way into the store and found himself a bottle of water. When he turned to ask what kind of drink Takashi wanted, he paused. The boy still wasn't saying anything, but he looked longingly at the case of _bento_ meals. If he'd run away, there was no telling when he'd last eaten...

"Go on, pick one," Kaname invited.

He watched Takashi scan the selection and focus in on a certain spot, then realized with a sinking that he was limiting himself to the smallest, cheapest options.

"No, get a big one."

The look Takashi gave him wasn't thankful, closer to stricken or confused, but Kaname could hardly have helped but say it.

As he checked out with the larger _bento_ and drinks and repeated the cover story to the clerk, he made certain to get change for the laundromat. They crossed the street to it under the first soft rumbles of thunder — Kaname felt one cold drop hit his cheek — and went inside to find it deserted except for a television perched on a shelf high up in the corner, tuned to a music video program. The rain that was coming wasn't enough to merit a warning at the bottom of the screen. Still, the thought that Takashi could have been caught outside in it made Kaname as grateful for the warm, dryer-scented air as he might be for shelter from a typhoon.

While the wet clothes ran through the washing machine and the gentle rain pattered against the windows, they sat in some chairs off to the side and Takashi slowly picked his way through the _bento_, only speaking once.

"It's really good," he said, shrinkingly polite. "Um... do you want any?"

"Oh, no. Thanks, but I can't," Kaname made certain to refuse.

The dryers were ranged along the back wall, facing an aisle behind the washing machines that couldn't be easily seen from the windows. When he'd transferred the clothes to a dryer, Kaname sat on the floor in front of it, in that hidden spot, and he motioned Takashi over to sit beside him. Maybe if they stayed out of sight, no one would call the police, or at least not as quickly...

Although there might be no point in putting it off. Of course, being the total stranger who had grabbed a runaway child off the street, he wasn't eager to see a police officer, and it ached just to imagine the look Takashi would give him if he said he was turning him in, but that would make certain he was safe, and if Kaname was honest with himself, he saw nothing better on offer.

He leaned back against the dryer, losing the sound of the rain in its loudly-conducted hum and the tossing of the clothes over and over, the arrhythmic clanking of the jacket zipper. _So I'm just sitting here waiting for something better to come along? I could at least talk to him._ That might work with his own Natsume — or maybe if the Okina could have gotten Touko, or Taki, or someone else who was actually good with people — but he was still afraid that Takashi would break or run away from him if he said the wrong thing. He'd known that his friend had had a hard life in the past but hadn't been prepared to find a child this isolated and fearful, this completely turned in on himself. But then, sitting here in silence was also just leaving him alone...

Takashi was idly looking up at the television.

"Do you have any shows you like?" Kaname asked him.

He turned his eyes toward the floor and didn't say anything.

Kaname gave it a long moment, then began trying in vain to think of an even more innocuous conversation-starter.

"Um..." Takashi finally broke the silence and even looked up into his face. "Are you... planning on eating me?"

"_**Uwagh! No!**_ Of course not, what are you...?" He trailed off with an inward groan. _Stupid! Coming from a youkai, that had to sound like protesting too much..._ With a sigh, he tried again. "Look, I couldn't eat you if I wanted to; I'm just not made that way. I can only drink water, actually." He lifted his water-bottle to illustrate.

Takashi skeptically held his gaze for another moment before looking away at the floor again. "If you're going to, you can just tell me," he said softly. "I won't run away."

The air froze in Kaname's chest. "Wha...? What are you talking about? Of course you should run away, if I was..." Words ran dry and failed before it, the thing he had known to the bottom of his heart that Natsume wouldn't do and yet here was Takashi — he could hardly even be ten years old — offering his life without a whimper.

His breath came loose suddenly; he nearly cried _"Natsume, that's crazy!"_ but remembered just in time that he wasn't supposed to know this boy's name. He was supposed to be the Okina — the one who'd scared him enough to chase him into the water without even really doing anything. "You ran away from me earlier, didn't you?" He snatched it as a shred of hope.

"I thought you'd followed me."

"Followed you from where?"

Kaname had forgotten not to press, but Takashi only drew up his knees and toyed with the too-long sleeves of the borrowed jacket. "From the Home."

"What kind of a place is that?" He had a leaden feeling that he already knew...

Takashi glanced at him. "The orphanage."

"Oh." That much, in a hollow voice, was all Kaname knew to say.

With sudden determination, Takashi pressed forward. "Maybe you're telling the truth and you're really nice, but the ones there aren't."

_'The ones'...!?_ "There are... more of us there?"

He nodded to the jacket cuffs. "They like it when the kids are sad, or get mad or get scared, or when they get hurt, so they're always whispering nasty things to them like 'your Mom threw you away' and 'everybody hates you,' and nobody knows they can hear it but just little by little they act like they did. Or they'll make the kids have accidents and nobody else knows it's them doing it. Sometimes if the adults aren't careful, they'll get inside them and make them do things, and then nobody believes it happened because only the kids remember it, or sometimes the person gets blamed, but when they bring in somebody new it just happens again... I tried to warn them, but they just got mad at me. They told me not to make things up to get attention, and then they ignored me..." He hugged his knees and kept going even as his voice tightened and began to crack.

Kaname listened, speechless. He had no words, but dared to wrap his arm around Takashi's shoulders.

"When I tried to warn the other kids, they just got scared, and that made it worse... _Why can I see them if all I can do is make it worse!?_" Takashi cried. He recovered himself with an unsteady breath and a sniffle. "Everybody there would be better off if I was gone..."

Kaname opened his mouth, but stumbled again over the urge to call him by name, because he had nothing else.

"And it doesn't matter... Nobody wants me, anyway..."

It was too much. Words or no words, caution blasted to dust, Kaname seized Takashi in his arms. The boy let go of his knees, uncoiling in surprise, and Kaname squeezed him tighter — _I'm probably just scaring him_ — but he couldn't let go.

"Don't say that!" he pleaded, close to Takashi's ear. "It's not true!"

"You don't know..." The child's voice quivered with strain.

"I do know! Please, believe me!"

Beside his ear he heard just a squeak, a tight cough of a sob.

"It's okay." _It's not okay, what I mean is..._ "You can cry if you want to."

A wail Takashi must have been keeping inside for a very long time started just scraping its way out, then broke free into full voice. Kaname held him and rocked him and wiped his own tears while Takashi bawled and gasped for the breath to go on bawling.

It didn't matter how long he wanted to go on. It only distantly occurred to Kaname to hope that no one heard and called the police. A different realization came much closer as he found that somewhere he had forgotten to think about the Natsume of his own time. Not completely, he still wanted to save his friend so badly he didn't care what it took, but he might have done that already, or it might be only a call to the police away, and in this moment it hardly seemed to matter — because the child in his arms was not just a means to that end. He was a soul, timid from battering but still trying the only way he knew how to take care of the people around him, still able to accept whatever Kaname was awkwardly holding out to him — still able to grow into Natsume, with his graceful, awkward, outreaching courage...

Kaname had gradually loosened his hold, and now he rubbed Takashi's still-heaving shoulders. _He's so strong. For a minute I thought he'd given up, but he really is..._

Like the rain outside, Takashi's tears would soften and then come down harder again, but gradually they tapered off, and he had mostly quieted down when the dryer's buzzer startled him.

"'Scuse me." Kaname dug another coin out of his pocket and started it back up again. These machines never got anything dry in one go, anyway...

Takashi sniffled and wiped his eyes on the jacket sleeves, and settled back on Kaname's shoulder when it was offered.

_And he thinks I'm a youkai. He really doesn't have any guarantee I won't eat him..._ But when he'd been trying so hard with no other help, caught between a monster-infested orphanage and the proven deadliness of striking out alone, this very well might seem like the best chance on offer — and with a new and sharper pain, Kaname felt just how little he _had_ to offer: only this narrow space the Okina had held open for him. Not enough to do something for that orphanage, as if he could do anything about it anyway; not enough to rescue Takashi from it or give him what he wished he could...

The songs on the television were the same ones he remembered from his own elementary school years, and for the first time he remembered that in some far-distant corner of this place, there was also another Kaname who was just Takashi's age. _This was even before Mom died..._ He wished Takashi could have met her, that Takashi and that younger Kaname could have met each other that soon...

He wished he could give Takashi something like that, but it was as impossible as bringing back the dead. Those "pillars of fate" wouldn't move. Still, in this little space they had, he wanted to give him something...

"I can hear your heart beating," Takashi said.

Kaname smiled through the sadness. "I told you, my human form is just that good." He bent his head closer. "But listen, I have another power, too. This one's usually a secret, but you're special, so I'll tell you. You see, every now and then, just a little bit...? I can see the future." He reflected with apologetic irony that now he was using his own Natsume as the means to an end, and he was sure it would all come out clumsy and he wouldn't do it justice, _but I really just want to give him something..._

"I know it's hard now," he told Takashi, "but it won't always be like this. Someday you'll have a real home, and the people there will worry about you if you come home late. If you have to ask them to go to some trouble all of a sudden, they'll be happy you felt like you could count on them, and if you say 'I want them to keep smiling,' you won't be scared that they'll get mad or call you a liar, you'll just be so happy living with them that you don't want anything to change.

"And it won't always be that you can just see us and can't do anything when it goes wrong. Someday you'll meet someone who ran into a really bad one, and you'll be the one who can help them. You might be the only one who could, and something terrible might have happened if they never met you.

"You'll have friends who hang out with you at school, and a best friend who you can even snap at about silly things because you know he likes you anyway, and, um..."

He took a deep breath. "Somewhere in there, you'll meet someone who... maybe isn't just like you, but they are a little bit. Enough that it would've been really lonely if they'd never met you..." That was such a faint-hearted effort at _what you're going to mean to me_, but more than that... There was just no way to say it...

Takashi had listened to it all in silence. "You don't have to make things up," he said softly.

With a smile, Kaname knew what to do next, and he leaned in to claim the reward for catching himself earlier. "I'm not making it up — _Natsume Takashi_."

The boy gasped.

"No one's told me your name yet, but they will."

Takashi pulled back face to face and opened his mouth, but Kaname lightly touched a finger to his lips. "Don't tell it to me now. I'm not supposed to find it out until later."

"You... You could've just found out my name anywhere..." he argued, lowering his eyes, but the resistance was half-hearted.

"Maybe I could've," Kaname admitted. "You'll find out for yourself if I'm telling the truth. Do you think you can wait and see?"

"How long am I supposed to wait?"

Kaname considered it. He wouldn't look like much of a prophet if he couldn't guess Takashi's age and do the math, or at least say something that was about right and had a ring to it...

"Seven years."

He saw and felt the boy sag in despair. Seven years might be longer than Takashi's living memory. "I know it's a long time, and it'll be hard, but I know you can do it." _Those_ pillars of fate wouldn't move, either.

"And then...?"

"And then the things I said will happen. I can't really tell you it stops being hard then, but I know that when you get there, you'll be glad you did. That's when you'll see me again, and that's why I want to make sure and wait to hear your name — because I want to see you then. And after that, I want to see you again and again..." He had to hug Takashi closer again, cheek to cheek because he didn't want to show the emotion on his face. _When I go back, I want you to be okay. I want to see you again and again..._

"Why?" Takashi's voice was tightening again, too.

"Just because it's you," Kaname told him. And that was the truth — the truth that had seemed too enormous for words and now it came out so simply...

Takashi sniffled against his shoulder. "Why do I have to wait that long? Why can't I just go with you now?"

"I'm sorry. I really wish you could, but... I'm just not strong enough to take care of you now," Kaname admitted.

Takashi didn't say anything.

_I need to give him something, just a little more..._ "But, um, listen..." Kaname said. "When I see you again in seven years... I should be stronger by then. If you still want to come and live with me..."

"_Then_ you'll take me with you?"

"Ah, yeah." _Okay, that's more than a little._ Why something so mundane would be as dizzying as getting mixed up with a youkai, he didn't know. He was talking about his own Natsume now, who wouldn't leave the Fujiwaras to take him up on it anyway, and if it came to that, Kaname thought his chances of talking his father into something were reasonably good, but the commitment no matter what was enormous and real. "If you want to, I'll figure something out..."

The next moment steadied him; for the first time it was Takashi who wrapped his arms around Kaname's chest and squeezed him. "Promise?"

"Yeah, I promise — but you have to hang in there until then, okay?"

A long pause. "Okay."

The two of them fell into silence again, but now Kaname felt that it was a different kind of silence. Holding Takashi and watching him breathe, he still felt the regret, but alongside it was finally some sense of peace — he couldn't put everything right, but it finally felt like he had put things just right enough, in this place...

The song on the television ended, and a new one started up.

"Thank you for saving me," Takashi said, out of the blue.

"Oh, don't worry about it. It was my pleasure."

Nothing more was said for long enough that Kaname started trying to think of conversation starters again, but Takashi yawned, and he put it out of mind. It was very late, better not to disturb a little boy who'd had such a hard day. Kaname just sat quietly holding him as he fell asleep, feeling through the jacket his thin warm flesh, his small bones... When he idly began stroking the boy's cheek, it was as soft as petting a kitten and felt so natural and so profound that it never occurred to him that he might not be doing it himself until the other voice stirred in his mind.

_So this is what a human child feels like..._

_Just a little bit longer, Okina-san._ Kaname was as satisfied as he was ever going to be, and now the Okina was awake to take him back, but just a little longer... _When he wakes up, then I'll call the police_, he told himself; that was still the best he could do.

But when the dryer buzzed again, Takashi only stirred a little — not enough to count, he decided, and he just fed it another coin. As they sat listening to the rain and the television and the dryer's tossing and humming, the Okina slowly absorbed from Kaname's memory everything that had passed since it fell asleep. By the end he could almost have thought that it was regarding him with the same look of awe it had given Ponta when it realized it had been mistaken about him, but the idea was just too unbelievable. His own sense of it all was that he'd had no idea what he was doing.

The dryer finally stopped. The music videos gave way to infomercials: an indestructible knife set, a miracle stain remover... They were selling an improbable cooking gadget when Kaname heard the door chime, a moment of louder rain, footsteps that sounded like a woman in heels... He saw a glimpse of her hair over the washing machines, but she crouched to load her clothes without looking; only when she went to get detergent from the vending machine at the side and turned around did she catch sight of them.

"Oh!" the woman cried in surprise.

Kaname waved, and spoke as softly as he could so as not to wake Takashi. "Hi. We got lost in the woods and my little brother fell in the water, so I had to dry his clothes. I called our parents to pick us up, they should be here pretty soon..." There was no way this would work a third time.

"Oh, I see." The woman wasn't so alarmed as to run right out the door; she started her laundry and even sat down and flipped through a magazine for a few minutes, but as the television ran through a final review of the amazingly low price of the cooking gadget, she got up and disappeared in front of the washing machines, and Kaname heard the door open and close again.

He gently nudged Takashi awake and stood to peer over the washers and through the rain-streaked windows as the woman crossed the street to the convenience store. Once inside, she didn't stop to look at anything before going to the clerk, who exchanged a few words with her and then picked up the phone. _Yeah, they are definitely calling the police._ But it was probably time for that anyway.

Takashi was still rubbing his eyes and yawning as Kaname pulled the clothes out of the dryer and offered him his jacket. "Trade you?"

They made the switch and Takashi started packing the rest back into his backpack.

"Takashi-kun," Kaname told him, "the police are going to be here soon."

The boy gasped and looked up. Those wide, pleading gold eyes didn't make it any easier, but...

"I need you to go with them."

He folded back in on himself somewhat. "You're sure I can't go with you?" he asked resignedly.

"I wish you could," Kaname said, then reached out to ruffle his hair. "But we'll see each other again. It's a promise, remember?"

Takashi looked into his eyes with an expression both intense and unreadable. Kaname remembered that he was pretending to be the Okina and tried to think of something to say about how a promise with him was a serious thing — but Takashi beat him to it, silently offering his pinky finger.

Kaname smiled and hooked it with his own. He'd only seen it on television and never really done it before, and he knew that there was a little rhyme you were supposed to say but didn't remember how it went. Takashi apparently didn't either; they just quietly held each other's fingers for a long moment before letting go. He patted Takashi's shoulder. "Come on."

They moved to the chairs where they could watch for the police car, Takashi sitting ready with his backpack strapped on. It only took a few minutes before it pulled up in front of the convenience store, and by some miracle the officer went in there first.

Kaname walked Takashi to the door and opened it; the wide breathy pattering and cold gray scent of the rain spilled over them. "Go on," he said, with a gentle push. "—And careful crossing the street."

Takashi gave him a look with a shy but welcome flash of "I'm not _five_, you know" reproach. It faded into something sadder, but he seemed to know, too, that this was the best they could do. "I'll see you later, then."

"See you," Kaname said, and waved as he went out the door.

He did look both ways before running across to the other side of the street. Kaname let the door fall shut between them, muffling the sound of the footsteps and the rain, and watched through the layers of glass and falling drops as Takashi went into the convenience store and the police officer saw him and came and put a hand on his shoulder...

Now it was done, and Natsume was safe — as safe as humans could make him. Left alone with just the sounds of the washing machine and the television sliding under the silence, Kaname let his breath out. He walked around and sank down out of sight in front of the dryers again. _Now would be a good time..._

The Okina heard him and came forward to take hold of him. _Young Man, you did very well, indeed._

This time he didn't resist as it carried him away toward home.

続く…  
_to be continued..._


	4. The Past and A Future

**Seven Year Promise**

by Fox in the Stars

based on _Natsume Yuujinchou_  
by Midorikawa Yuki and Brain's Base

* * *

**Chapter Four: The Past and A Future  
**

Takashi had fought so hard to hang onto consciousness in that rainy-night vision lest he really fall asleep there and let himself freeze to death, he didn't know when he had lost his grip. As he began to wake, though, he felt cozy and warm, recognized the sensation of Nyanko-sensei's fur, and knew that he was safe now.

Only when he shifted his head a little did he notice another sensation, a different texture of warm softness with a hard, toothy line down it that rested against his nose. _A jacket zipper?_

He blinked his eyes open and looked. There was Tanuma, resting against Sensei's side and fast asleep.

"Tanuma?"

"He pushed himself too far, but he'll be all right," Sensei answered in his deep, rumbling true-form voice, curled around with his head near the two of them. "He only needs rest."

"What happened?" Takashi asked. The drowning dreams and the freezing vision; Tanuma being possessed and now ending up like this... None of it made any sense.

"Those two just saved your life," Sensei told him. "I would have saved it, but apparently you were too stupid for that."

"Huh?"

"Think hard, Natsume. Did you ever fall in a river when you were younger?"

Takashi frowned, leaning back against Sensei. He couldn't immediately recall such a thing, but this last vision had given him a clue, whether he wanted it or not.

_The Children's Home..._

Everything about that incident had made him shy away from the memories: his relatives finally just admitting that no one wanted him at all; those horrible youkai who haunted the place tormenting the children with impunity, stoking their loneliness, bitterness, and fear for their own enjoyment and sometimes even possessing the staff; his own fear and pain and shame — at that time there had really been nothing he could do that didn't make it worse... He'd flinched away so many times that he had finally succeeded in never thinking about it until _Matoba_ of all people had to bring it up, and even now he "remembered" it at second hand, as the dry prose story he'd told himself about it and not the direct experience.

How it ended, he'd never really remembered at all. He knew that he'd run away, and then the next thing he'd ever known was sitting in the police station; someone must have brought him in, but who it was or what they looked like was just a blank. A new set of relatives had picked him up from there, and that might still be the angriest he had ever seen a sober adult human in his life, one more reason to turn away...

But the answer almost had to be in that gap, and now he had to try and remember. It felt like stretching himself out on a bed of nails, but he did try, pressing carefully but determinedly through the prickling. He had packed spare clothes and the picture of his parents into his backpack — _that backpack!_ — and maybe stained the picture with that shame, maybe that was why he couldn't look at it for so long — _Keep going..._ He'd slipped away from school and had nowhere to go except to look up at the forested mountain above the town and hope for something on the other side. Amazingly, he'd managed not to get caught; he remembered making it into the woods on the slope, making it until nightfall and still walking, tired and hungry, picking his way up a gravel road in near-total darkness...

And then, somewhere on that road, he'd felt something behind him.

Takashi gasped. There it was — the Okina looming over him, and he'd run away and dropped the backpack to run faster like they told the kids at school to do if they ever had to run from a kidnapper, but in the dark he couldn't see where he was going. The fall, the cold water, and then —

He clapped a hand to his mouth and looked at Sensei. The gold eye facing him returned a knowing look.

_"But apparently you were too stupid for that"..._ He still couldn't go back; he'd still kept going until someone stepped out from the darkness...

His jaw dropped. "Tanuma...!"

Tanuma didn't answer. He still lay fast asleep.

* * *

Kaname felt the streams of time all around him but felt them very differently than he had before. Rather than being pulled through them at speed, now he was drifting leisurely along with their flow.

"There is no need for haste now," the Okina told him. "To think that I of all things nearly failed on that account..."

A more restful journey was fine; they would arrive at the same place, anyway.

It was as though he were laying in the bottom of a boat, but instead of a boat, it was the rock again, and he was more aware of it than ever — pushed up in a crag by the forces of the earth, worn smooth by years of watching over the river's edge. Now it was completely submerged in that other current, so that it was hard to tell where the water began and ended; everything was flowing except the rock and himself and the Okina holding him.

"Why are we back here again?" he asked.

"Young Man," the Okina replied, "this is my home — my original form."

Kaname could see it: a rock standing solid and still, unable to move to touch objects in space as water and humans and animals and even the trees reaching out with branch and root could do, but watching patiently long enough to see everything flow except itself, long enough to see that time was also a river and everything was a stream flowing over and around its own touch — tree roots tickling its sides under the shifting soil until they too became the soil for new roots; kappa living in its shadow and resting in the calmer water that baffled against its side; humans bringing delicious-smelling food for a picnic on its sun-warmed surface, then flowing back to the town where they lived...

And Kaname. Now he could see that he was also a stream, just briefly eddying into the Okina's lap where it held him. He was really flowing, too, on from here alongside other streams that he couldn't quite see into but that felt familiar. One of those streams had brushed over the rock before and now came back to it, or it to him, the one who carried its name.

The Okina's name...

"_Toshige_," Kaname whispered. He hadn't heard it yet, but he would.

"Yes," the Okina confirmed.

And the stream carrying the name — Natsume — would flow on from there, through smooth places and rough places, near to Kaname and farther away and nearer again...

That was all Kaname needed to know. He drew his attention back inward and let himself rest, still just for this moment in the Okina's gentle hold as it carried him home.

"We do have one more place to go before that," it reminded him.

That was right. One more promise to keep...

* * *

Takashi had to knock on the door of the temple and hide to distract the priest while Sensei carried Tanuma back into his room and tucked him into bed. Even that didn't rouse him — a worrying sign, but Sensei, now back in cat form, insisted that it was all right, and Takashi had to rush to get back for the end of school, make his excuses and fetch the homework as promised.

When he returned to the temple, he knocked on the door properly and talked to Tanuma's father, who let him call home and then go in to see his friend, even though Tanuma was still fast asleep. Only then did Sensei have the time to tell him the whole story — although some parts seemed a bit embellished.

"...And for some reason the old geezer was being cagey about it all. I got it out of him, of course, but it took a courageous, heroic struggle, and maybe Tanuma wasn't quite ready for the radiant dignity of my —"

"You panicked and scared the heck out of him, didn't you?" Takashi accused, reading between the lines.

"_**I did not panic!**_"

Tanuma finally — thankfully — moaned and shifted, wakened by the noise. Takashi leapt to full attention and anxiously watched his friend open his eyes, look up at him blearily and smile.

"_natsume..._"

"It's okay, I'm here."

"_...so glad you're all right..._"

"Yeah, thanks to you," Takashi said with an awkward smile.

"_mmhh... your book..._"

"Don't worry about it," he soothed. "Sensei told me what happened."

But Tanuma poked a hand over the edge of the quilt and weakly motioned Takashi to lean in closer. "_you'll have to wait until dad leaves or goes to sleep_," he whispered. "_i hid it under the priest's seat in the buddha hall..._"

Sensei had come close to listen, too, and stared for a moment before putting on his air of nonchalance. "Well, it'll be safe there for a while. Only the priest's brat would be that shameless."

Tanuma's eyes had fallen shut again, but a little drunken laugh got through before he drifted off.

* * *

Taki cornered Takashi before Saturday morning school to ask what was going on; she'd heard the previous day that Tanuma was out sick and Takashi had run off in a panic at lunch, but then he'd hurried away too quickly for her to catch him. Now he explained to her that Tanuma had been possessed again but that the Okina was harmless and had already done what it had to do and now it was just a matter of letting it rest up enough to leave.

After class, the boys went to visit Tanuma, and of course Takashi had reported that the coast was clear only to find that he had developed a miserable cough overnight. Taki arrived some time later, bringing still-hot oatmeal spice cookies in what she would later admit was a special energy-replenishing recipe she had devised. Tanuma pulled a sharp breath on the first bite — probably the Okina was awake again; with that cliff-edge feeling gone, it was harder to tell. Still, he insisted that the flavor wasn't bad, just very interesting; Takashi and Kitamoto could only agree with that, Nishimura declared that they were the best cookies in the world ever, and when Nyanko-sensei managed to escape Taki's cuddling, he never met a cookie he didn't like.

After Nishimura and Kitamoto went home, Taki was able to get more of the story, not only from Takashi and Tanuma but also from the Okina itself, who came forward to talk to her. Tanuma insisted that he didn't mind, but Takashi just couldn't feel comfortable seeing that odd old-man's smile on his friend's face. He braced himself, too, for something to come out that he didn't want Taki to hear, but thankfully no one ever mentioned the Book of Friends — bad enough that Tanuma was that much more mixed up in it now — and no one ever mentioned what he'd been doing that night years ago; Tanuma just said he'd been rescued from drowning and left it at that, and in every moment of danger that the Okina would say more, it caught itself, or more likely Tanuma caught it and convinced it to back away.

Takashi himself was still prodding gingerly at fragmented images — Tanuma sitting with him and desperately hugging him on the floor of a laundromat of all places, accepting his awkward, childish offer of a "pinky promise" that he couldn't even recall the terms of except for "seven years," which wasn't a bad guess of how long it had been. When he'd never remembered it without knowing that it was Tanuma, it was awkward to get his mind around not having known all along, but at the time he must have thought his rescuer was a youkai; an invitation to eat more had struck him with fear that he was being fattened up for a meal — and yet he'd wagered his life on a total stranger because he'd been that desperate for such a flash of kindness. Even if they were going to eat him, he'd thought, that might be better than drowning or freezing or starving or the torments that waited back at the Children's Home, if they would just say it and not keep him in suspense; it might be worth it, if they would just hold him like that...

He shuddered to think how lucky he'd been that night. Whatever found him could have done anything to him it liked, and he'd run into the Okina that went this far to bring Sensei and Tanuma to his rescue.

For Tanuma, it had happened just yesterday. He must remember it all, not just seven-year-old tatters of it, and Takashi knew he would have to face up to that soon but was certain he would panic if it all came tumbling out in front of him without warning.

And after that childhood mistake, there was nothing he could have done. If Tanuma hadn't knocked on his door when he did or hadn't taken the Book of Friends away from him, if he'd found the Okina's name, he really might have just ordered it out of Tanuma and made it all worse. He could have made it all worse even by thinking about it too much, and had only sat ignorant and helpless while the Okina and Sensei and Tanuma fought to put it right for him. Because he'd been "too stupid" to be rescued in one try, it had ended up like this...

Lost in thought, he sat idly holding a cookie until it became the last one, and now he was nudged back to his senses as Sensei snatched it away from him.

"Huh?"

"It'd be wasted on you with that gloomy look on your face," the cat insisted. "What's your problem, anyway? It all worked out fine — no more nightmares."

"Uh, mmh..." he assented vaguely.

Taki turned toward them. "Did he say somethi—?" she started, but her question was cut short as Tanuma was seized with a violent coughing fit.

Takashi felt it in his own throat with a tightening _because of me_...

* * *

By Monday morning, Kaname was still tired and coughing but well enough to drag himself to school — packing the blandest lunch he could in hopes of avoiding embarrassment. He spent his afternoons after class with Natsume and Taki, and Taki, not to miss the rare opportunity for an aspiring youkai researcher, brought a notebook and tape recorder to extensively interview the Okina. It even demonstrated its power for her by promising to ferry a book back in time just slightly so that for a few minutes they were looking at two instances of the same book, identical down to the last dog-ear and the last detail of Taki's handwriting where she'd written her name inside the cover.

When she understood its fascination with flavors, she also made a game of how many she could introduce it to: curry, pizza, sushi, chocolate, strawberries, peppermint — this while Ponta was taking him through the entire menu at Nanatsujiya. At times Kaname was nearly overwhelmed; the wasabi and pickled ginger made the sushi dinner a challenge, and the curiously strong mints were downright sadistic. Still, he did want to treat the Okina, it was great fun in its way, and with Natsume and Taki he wasn't so jealous with his dignity. Nothing else measured up to that _umeboshi_, anyway.

As the week went on, he did worry about Natsume, who seemed to be off in his own world even more than usual. Kaname slowly felt the awkward weight between them more and more — he wouldn't have done it any differently, but he had seen things he wasn't meant to, things Natsume hadn't wanted to talk about. Like the incident at Omibashira's mansion, it seemed that every time something happened to push him closer to where Natsume was, it ended with the two of them further apart.

Kaname told himself that that was why, although he was finally able to see the youkai like Natsume, he tried to treat them all the way he had his first glimpse of the kappa. It might just be an excuse to cover being afraid of them, but he also didn't want to intrude any further and risk driving that wedge deeper, so he just watched Natsume deal with them out of the corners of his eyes. At least, he told himself, if something serious happened, he wouldn't be entirely useless.

But there were other risks, too, as he learned walking home from school one day when they came to the river and he saw a huge white dog splashing around in the water. "Wow, he's a big one."

"Yeah, he is," Natsume agreed. "I wonder who he belongs to."

Nishimura turned around. "Huh?"

"The dog," Kaname told him.

The others all looked. "What dog?" Kitamoto asked.

It was the look on Taki's face that told Kaname what was happening.

"Ah, it must have just been..." Natsume's old excuse trailed off.

"Yeah, uh, like I saw a reflection and then because I said something..." Kaname tried; how could they both claim to have imagined something at once? Suddenly it felt like a miracle that Natsume ever pointed out anything he saw to anyone — and like Kaname had led his friend into a trap.

The dog looked up at them, and instead of a bark, out came "Natsume? Natsume!" It splashed out of the water — could anyone else even see the ripples? — and trotted toward them, wagging its tail.

Natsume couldn't help watching it approach. "You know, I forgot something. I'll have to go back."

"Man, you need to tie a string on your finger or something," Nishimura told him.

"Should we come with you?" Taki asked.

"No, that's okay. See you later."

He turned and walked away, with the dog following and romping around him. "Natsume! I missed you! Are we gonna play another game? Do I get my name back if I win, do I, do I? . . ."

The dog-youkai seemed friendly — even the Okina thought so — but Kaname felt a weight pressing down on him as he watched them go. He'd just made the moment more awkward; Natsume had said not to follow him, and there was nothing to do except walk away...

Taki touched his arm. "It's okay, everybody's eyes play tricks on them sometimes," but she said it with a downcasted look.

She couldn't even see it. Kaname knew that helpless feeling, but right now having the sight only seemed to make it worse, and he couldn't say anything to her past that melancholy pressure.

Everything else was getting easier; the Okina had eventually gotten used to the scratchy soreness of his cold and left it alone tolerably well. Little by little, it was even getting used to the taste of food and the feel of a hot bath, but never before this week had Kaname realized how much of emotion was felt with the body; the Okina found those sensations puzzling and regarded them more and more curiously — sinking them into Kaname with greater and greater weight.

* * *

Friday evening, a full week after it had all happened, Taki went out to dinner with her family and Natsume arranged to stay the night at the temple with Kaname. With the next day a free Saturday, Kaname thought, they would have plenty of time to sort through things if they could manage it.

On the way there, when it was just Kaname and Natsume and Ponta, something rustled on the path behind them. "Natsume-sama!" someone called.

To address Natsume like that, it had to be another youkai. Kaname wasn't sure whether to turn and look or not.

But Natsume turned quite casually. "Hey, Chuukyuu."

Kaname did look, and it was a youkai — two very obvious ones, in fact, a sort of cyclops and minotaur pair.

"Natsume-sama!" the cyclops beamed. "Will you be coming to Yatsuhara tonight? We'll be holding a big celebration!"

"Big, big!" the minotaur echoed.

"Sorry, I can't make it tonight," Natsume said, just as if a classmate had asked when he was behind on his homework.

"Oh, Natsume-sama, please honor us with your presence! We've found the most excellent saké —"

"Guys, I'm still underage."

"I'm in!" Ponta announced.

"I wasn't talking to you!"

While the cyclops begged and argued, the minotaur noticed Kaname, tapped its partner's shoulder with a hoof and pointed to him. He tensed as the cyclops suddenly stared straight at him, came up very close, then darted to the side. His eyes tracked it by reflex.

The two youkai suddenly leaped back in panic. "_**UWAAAAAUGH! THE LITTLE PRIEST CAN SEE US!**_" Kaname couldn't help crying out in shock himself, and the cyclops sprang to its feet and hackled at him like a scared-angry cat. "Shoo! Go away!"

Natsume came to his rescue. "Stop it! It's okay, he's my friend!"

"Calm down, you two," Ponta commanded lazily. "The little one's harmless. He can only see you right now because he's possessed."

"Possessed?" the cyclops questioned.

"Yeah, the brat's getting downright popular. That geezer's pretty attached to him — and I wouldn't mess with that geezer if I were you. You might find out your saké got spilled an hour ago..."

Kaname let the Okina step forward to speak; it could probably do more than he could. "Oh, surely there's no need for such a thing as that, Master Kitty," it said. "...Although, I still have yet to taste saké. Is it really so wonderful?"

"Oh, yes!" the cyclops enthused.

"Saké, saké!" the minotaur cheered.

"_**No! Just no!**_" Natsume shouted, wheeled Kaname around by the shoulders and herded him away up the path. "We have to go, sorry! Maybe next time!"

"So," Ponta's voice cut off the two youkai's objections, "were you implying that I _wasn't invited_...?"

"Oh, he's going to be obnoxious in the morning..." Natsume muttered as they left the scene behind — so it turned out Ponta was not only a wolf monster but also a sloppy drunk. "Sorry about those guys. When you moved in, your Dad kind of purified them by accident and they really didn't like it."

"Oh. Okay. I guess that explains it." _Dad did __**what?**_

In truth, it had stung to have Natsume's other friends shoo him away as an interloper — and to be called "harmless" and reminded that these were borrowed robes. He might have known it already from watching Natsume, and the last week had taught him in a new and deeper way that the sight wasn't an unalloyed blessing, but still, he had never once considered asking the Okina to take it away...

When they arrived at the temple, Kaname led the way into the Buddha Hall to retrieve the Book of Friends from under the priest's seat in front of the altar; he'd finally confessed that he was keeping something important there for Natsume, and his father had allowed it in such a special case, so there was no need for secrecy now — although he made Natsume laugh with the story of the New Year's temple cleaning years ago when his father had found one of his toys under there and the lecture he'd gotten. When he handed over the Book of Friends, the Okina relaxed at one more promise fulfilled — its word to Ponta that it would see the book returned to its rightful owner — and Kaname and Natsume offered a prayer to thank the Buddha for watching over it.

Back in Kaname's room, homework provided an excuse to avoid the looming awkwardness until supper — another curry, but especially under the Okina's influence, this one tasted completely different, being one of his father's more Indian-style recipes with _paneer_ that Natsume mistook for tofu at first. After the meal, however, Kaname knew that it would be useless to put it off any more.

Natsume seemed to feel the same way; when he sat down he turned his back to the books and squinted into the late pearl-yellow sun, which glowed in stray strands of his hair and streamed into the room so harshly that switching the light on could barely bring out its stark shadows.

"Yeah, it's always like this in the evening," Kaname said — awkwardly; it wasn't as if his friend hadn't stayed over and seen it before. He looked out over the yard — the pond glared almost solid white — then pulled the doors shut, casting the room into tame indoor lighting, and finally sat down at the low table with a sigh.

He was out of delaying tactics. There was nothing left but to talk, and the apprehension wound around his chest, unnaturally tight.

_Young Man, I simply don't understand this_, the Okina questioned — of course it had to pick this moment to confront him. _You __**want**__ to speak with your friend, do you not?_

_ It's complicated... Look, I really need to do this by myself. Please?_

The Okina did back away respectfully, but it could no more switch off its curiosity than Kaname could switch off his nerves. He could only try to ignore the other presence looking over his shoulder and push past the feeling. It took several breaths to gather his courage before saying the only words he knew to come at it with...

"I'm sorry."

It came out as a chorus; he turned toward Natsume and found that Natsume had turned toward him and said the very same thing. They stared at each other for a moment before backing off from it with nervous laughs.

"What are you apologizing for?" Natsume wondered. "Did I ever thank you, for saving me?"

"You did. Back... back then." Back then, Kaname hadn't been able to keep his mind around little Takashi and Natsume being the same person, but now he had to face the fact that they were. "How much of that do you remember?"

"Not much, just... flashes. I never remembered it at all until this last week..."

That made sense. Before last Friday, it hadn't actually happened yet; it had only been a blank space the Okina was holding open, and maybe it was silly to have gone that far when he was just going to forget — but no, Kaname knew absolutely that it hadn't been silly at all. Besides, it would be too creepy to imagine that Natsume had remembered him all along...

"I don't even remember what the promise was," Natsume admitted. "I know we promised something in seven years, but..."

"It was mostly just that you'd get here," Kaname said. He was tempted to leave out the rest, but that would be too cowardly. "That and... Well, you wanted me to take you with me, and I said if you still wanted me to in seven years then I'd figure something out..."

Natsume blushed with a little awkward groan. "Yeah... Sorry about that. I just didn't know how to... how to act around people, back then. I wasn't really what you'd call a cute kid..."

"No, that's—! You were beautiful!" Kaname blurted. Natsume's eyes went wide, and he had to turn away, blushing. _Why did I have to say it like that?_ But he actually knew that much, it was more why it had to sound like that. His face burned so hot it felt like it should blister.

_But you know yourself that what you said was good and true_, the Okina observed, unable to contain itself. _If that's so, then why should you suffer?_

An inward groan was enough to make it back away again, but that just left him in an uncomfortable silence that stretched for several moments.

"Sorry, I don't know if I should say anything..." he admitted.

"No it's... It's okay."

Natsume's tone wasn't entirely convincing, but Kaname thought he might burst if he didn't take the offer. "I wanted to... You told me kind of what was happening, and I didn't want to just send you back to that, but I didn't know what else to do..."

"They didn't take me back to the Home after that," Natsume said.

Kaname felt a blessed wash of relief. "Really?"

"Yeah, some relatives took me in again, and they came and got me from the police... But it really was stupid. Back then, I thought no one but me would get hurt if I did that, but so many people actually did — the police, the people who had to take care of me after that... I'm sure I scared everyone at the Home. And then you and Sensei..."

"I don't mind. It's okay, really."

Natsume shook his head. "It's not okay. You were sick most of this week because of me. Even back then..." He showed that awful self-deprecating smile. "I think I made you cry."

"When I say 'it's okay,' I mean it!" Kaname insisted; he wanted to wipe away that smile — and he did, but it came out harsher than he intended. "I don't mind that part. I mean, it was hard, but... _It wasn't stupid_," he realized firmly. "What would have happened to you if you hadn't gotten away from there?"

Natsume's jaw went slack, and he stared very much as he had seven years ago when Kaname had told him that the gravel road through the cedars led only to his death — but this time it wasn't a reassuring sight. Now Kaname didn't have the luxury of being a complete stranger who could swoop in to the rescue and then vanish into the night; he had to stay right here in his normal life and deal with having made his friend feel like that. It tightened inside him until he had to squirm away from it by averting his eyes and saying something to pass it off. "That's the only thing that bothered me, that you were already like that—"

He felt his whole body clamp down on it. If he'd meant to pass the moment off, that was the last thing he should have said, but it had squeezed out under pressure and now it was out in the air and he couldn't take it back...

"Wha... What do you mean...?" Natsume asked softly.

"Like... Like that." Kaname couldn't read his face — because he couldn't _look_ — and he was caught with no way out, no way forward except to plunge in deeper. "You could already lie with that smile on your face that says 'nobody be upset' like that was all that mattered. You told me I could eat you!" His voice broke, and he tried to back off from it. "I don't think you meant it, really, but..."

The words ran dry; he still couldn't look. Natsume didn't say anything, and the silence tightened around him until he couldn't stand it and crumpled into his arms on the table. "I'm sorry. I was trying to help, but I stole your Book, and I saw things you didn't want me to... If I think I can help I'm always just going to rush in, but then I don't know if..." — _but I do know._ "Even if I think I did the right thing, it just... It ends up feeling bad..." _I end up being scared that you'll run away and now I'm scared you will because I said something like an idiot and messed it all up and if I told you I was scared then you really would, I just know it..._

The Okina quietly came closer and held Kaname, wanting to comfort him, but it couldn't help making it worse — because it had never known that human fear and shame and sadness could feel like this, like it should crush him to death and grind his bones into powder...

When something touched his shoulder, the sensation shot through him like a bolt of electricity, and he jumped in surprise — before he realized that it was Natsume's hand _and I jumped and he pulled away_ and that was the last thing he would ever have wanted to do and now he couldn't take it back. It felt like a plunging and burning cold, so heavy he could hardly breathe — this time he was the one falling into the icy water and drowning...

And then it melted away. He was lifted away from it and watched his body relax into quiet, sagely dignity and sit back, his face lift up toward the ceiling, his own mouth whisper, "That will be quite enough of that..."

"Okina-san?" Natsume questioned.

It nodded. "Young Master, I believe it is time for you to return my name."

Kaname felt it with a shock.

"But you said you'd disappear," Natsume objected. "You don't have to do that! We could take you back home. If you can't stay with Tanuma, I—"

The Okina shook Kaname's head. "Ever since My Lady your grandmother placed my name in her book and attached my life to something beyond my home, I have been able to travel and see many wonderful things. I've seen the humans' dwelling places. I've seen much of this land as I searched for you, and now I've seen the feelings that move mortal creatures. Shall I now return to being a rock, or shall I journey on to see what else I may find? No, I have known for some time that it should be this way."

_And you didn't tell me._ Even as the Okina answered Natsume's question, Kaname felt that the words were addressed perhaps moreso to him — and that it was leaving now for his sake, because it had had "quite enough" of causing him pain. _You don't have to go! I don't mind, really — it's too fast just like that —_

But if the trouble was too little time, of course he and the Okina had all the time they wanted. The room fell silent and faded away as the two of them floated in the stillness of that other space.

"Yes, Young Man," the Okina said. "I well know the depth of your kindness and forbearance, but shall I choose to repay it with such suffering as you endured just now? No, I have imposed on your hospitality long enough."

_I don't want you to disappear!_

"And in that, I fear I must be willful and gainsay you," it replied, without a trace of condescension. "You have great strength to endure it."

_Great strength..._ More unearned praise brought him up against the other reason he didn't want to let go, but it was so selfish he couldn't say it even in his mind.

He didn't have to. "You fear that you have no power to be of use to your friend, alone without my eyes? But Young Man, that is far from true," the Okina told him. "You have miraculous sight of your own."

Surely it couldn't be calling those shadows and headaches miraculous. _Are you just trying to make me feel better?_

"Not at all. You even said it yourself. When you told the Young Master your power, did you believe that you were speaking in jest? I assure you, you were not."

What _had_ he claimed as his power? _ I can see when you're lying ... I can act like a human_ — such small, prosaic things, how could calling them "my powers" be anything but a joke? "But I didn't..." he resisted. "I didn't do anything the first time, it was just Ponta, and then..."

"Yes indeed. Think well upon it. Master Kitty so skillfully rescued the Young Master from the water, after I had intended to leave him behind. You were the one who saw deeply enough to trust him and reach for his aid. Even then we nearly failed in our purpose because no one heeded your misgivings. After all my years of holding my promise to save the Young Master, he nearly perished because I in my pride did not avail myself of _your_ eyes — the eyes that could see his heart where mine could not."

Kaname stared. He hardly dared to accept it, but laid out in front of him it was impossible to deny.

"When we made the journey to put it right, it was you who guided me and lent me your strength, and then it was you who had the power to soothe the Young Master's pain and help him — a power that I could never aspire to. Perhaps even Master Kitty could not have done what you did.

"The Young Master needed the help I could give him in one small place, long since past, but he will need you — and the curious Young Lady, and the Honored Lady and Master of his house, and Master Kitty — he will need you in a great wide place that stretches far beyond here. Do not doubt that you have sight and power enough."

_My adorable, remarkable little creature..._

The Okina held Kaname as it had sitting on its rock, and he felt its embrace on that dimension where he might never feel anything touch him again. Everything it said might be true — even for a moment, he let himself think so — but that couldn't erase the fact that the pond would be just a shadow again, Natsume's other friends would disappear again... It even pricked him that he might never see that fierce painted wolf again — it really was handsome and dignified after all. He couldn't pretend that he would be happy to lose all of that, but for now, even just for the moment the glow of genuine praise would last, he felt that what he would be left with was enough...

"Are you sure?" It was Natsume's voice.

Beyond Kaname's closed eyelids, they had slipped back into the natural flow of time, but as he watched for his body to answer, it didn't move. The Okina was leaving it to him and whether he was ready. He knew that it was enough, and that his own other friend had made a choice about its life and deserved respect.

Kaname nodded. He felt the Okina wrap around him, reassuring and grateful — and then in his own mundane space he felt another warmth enfold him, and he opened his eyes.

Natsume had wrapped his arms around his neck and hugged him, warm cheek to cheek. "Thank you," he whispered in Kaname's ear. "Both of you."

"I was honored..." That came out so formal it had to have been the Okina. "I was happy to, really..."

Finally, Natsume let him go and sat back, picked up the Book of Friends and opened it between his two hands.

"_My guardian spirit, reveal to me thy name..._"

Kaname watched as if in a dream. He felt as the Okina felt — or could he have felt it himself? — the strange, gentle power that filled the room as an unseen wind ruffled the book, page over page of indecipherable calligraphy until one leaf snapped up straight. With a careful, practiced hand, Natsume tore the page from the book, folded the name inside it and took the fold in his mouth. The clap of his hands rippled through the air. He raised his head and blew through the paper a wordless breath, but Kaname could hear as the Okina heard, a prayer of grace and gratitude...

_I return your name to you. Please accept it and be free._

_Toshige._

The strokes of ink on the paper lifted on Natsume's breath like feathers and danced through the air. Kaname reflexively closed his eyes as they flew toward him, and then everything was swallowed up in whiteness, pure and warm and bright...

* * *

"Wow, you _are_ a big one, aren't you?"

Toshige looked down. He'd heard the human footsteps come onto his rock and hoped that some of his recent visitors were back for another picnic with more of that wonderful-smelling human food, but instead he found a girl he had never seen before standing there in a school uniform eating a _taiyaki_ from a paper bag — and looking straight at him. It had been a wide space indeed since he saw a human do that.

"When I asked around, the little ones said you were the strongest around here," she told him.

"Oh, I should hardly say that," he protested, even as it fluffed his pride.

"Well, it's fine anyway. Do you want to play a game with me?"

"What sort of game?"

"If I win, you have to put your name in my book and be one of my minions. If _you_ win..." — she noticed him eyeing the _taiyaki_ — "you can have the rest of the bag. You can even eat me, if you want to," she offered with a foxish smile.

"Oh, Young Lady, I fear such things are of no use to me," he lamented. To demonstrate, he reached down for the cake in her hand, and as always his white-sleeved fingers passed right through it without feeling a thing.

"Oh!" The girl's brows lifted. "You _can't_ eat anything like that, can you? In that case, I bet it would really be useful for you to have a human servant, wouldn't it? You could possess me, and then..."

She popped the last bite of the _taiyaki_'s tail into her mouth. Toshige bent over face-to-face with her and watched as she chewed it with slyly obvious enjoyment.

"It would indeed..."

"But I don't know how you'd beat me like that, either," she said, swallowing. "What kind of a game do you think would be fair?"

Toshige considered it. "Let us say... that you win the contest if you can tell me where you've seen me before."

"Hmm?"

"Oh, I promise you, you've seen me before." It wouldn't be hard to find a place that neither she nor anyone else had paid any mind to until now, a little open space between the pillars of fate...

The girl was sitting on a bench facing the railway tracks as Toshige watched over the corner of the brick building. Other young humans — boys in black collars and girls in uniforms just like his visitor's — wandered about and stood in knots and talked to each other. It had been a very, very wide space since he saw so many humans at once, like a vision of another world. He wanted to hear what they all were saying and see the great machines that ran along the metal rails, but he couldn't stay long away from home, just until the girl caught sight of him and he'd kept his promise.

A group of the other girls cast glances toward the bench. "Why did _she_ have to come on the class trip?" one of them questioned.

They all gasped as she turned her head toward them, but then she saw something more interesting and passed them over to turn and look at Toshige — and that was enough —

"The last stop before we got here! You were looking at me around the corner of the station."

Toshige listened, stunned, and let his head fall back. Defeated that quickly...

"It sticks out in my mind because you're so tall. Want to try again?"

"No, no," he surrendered. "I always keep my word."

When she brought out her book for him to sign, however, that wasn't so easy; he couldn't touch the writing brush, either.

"I guess I'll have to help you. Just for a minute, okay?"

"Yes, My Lady."

The girl let him possess her so that he could sign his name, but when he'd made the last mark, he clung to the moment of feeling the bamboo brush handle in her fingers, velvety-smooth and almost warm... He could taste the lingering traces of the _taiyaki_ in her mouth — the light warm sweet of the cake, the heavy mealy sweet of the bean paste — and there were two more still in the bag...

"Oh, no, you don't. You lost fair and square," she told him. "Besides, if I did that, I might never get rid of you..."

* * *

The vision faded, and for the first time, Takashi looked upon the Okina's form without fear and understood that kind smile as it rose up under the ceiling, beaming down on him and Tanuma. Its wordless peace and fulfillment rolled through the air like a sigh, and its huge shape flooded with brilliant, gentle light.

"Thank you, Toshige," Takashi whispered one last time.

As the Okina dissolved into floating star-points and shimmered away, its glow clung to Tanuma until the very end, and Takashi had a sense that perhaps they were sharing a final goodbye just between the two of them.

At last it was gone. Tanuma swayed unsteadily, and Takashi moved forward again to catch him.

They sat there, leaning against each other. It felt strange for Takashi to realize that he was the one holding his friend — he was exhausted from returning the name, more awkward with people than Tanuma and physically smaller, how could he be the one to rely on for support? — but the tables were turned from that night seven years ago. Now it was Tanuma crying on his shoulder, hiding his face there and sniffling through quiet sobs.

"Are you going to be okay?" Takashi asked.

"Yeah. Just feeling it for myself, it's not as bad," Tanuma answered, but his voice was tight and quiet.

"Did you... see Reiko?"

He nodded.

It struck uncomfortably, but Takashi found that it also felt good. At least one other human in this world had seen his grandmother and knew who she was and wouldn't say she was lying or crazy...

A long minute passed. Tanuma didn't say anything, but Takashi thought surely no one could blame him, not now. "You got to be good friends, didn't you?"

A sharper sniffle was the only answer for a few moments, then Tanuma spoke, harshly unsteady like he was trying to laugh. "I guess this happens to you all the time."

"Yeah..." It was true, Takashi could point to any number of times, but what caught him was the way Tanuma had said it. Something came through despite the strain — or maybe sharpened by the strain — like even as he was tying their experience together he was backing away, only expecting such a vague answer, if anything at all.

It reminded Takashi of the very first time they'd spoken. Tanuma had said the Chuukyuu were probably just his imagination even after Takashi had been the one to point them out; it didn't make any sense — unless he had really meant to say "don't worry, I don't expect anything from you." That felt like what he was saying now, and it was tempting but too gentle, too lonely...

Takashi could point to any number of times... When he'd tried to tell Tanuma and Taki before, in his mind he'd pointed to all of them at once and said _I don't know where to start_, but maybe that was just an excuse...

Tanuma picked himself up, fetched the box of tissues and dabbed his eyes, but didn't say anything more.

_Talking about myself when he just lost his friend, that might be..._ It might be the wrong thing to do, but sitting here in silence was definitely the wrong thing to do. He just needed one place to begin, one specific thing that he could touch with his fingers...

"Did I... ever show you the koto?"

Tanuma looked up and shook his head, still sniffling. His eyes were open like it wasn't the wrong thing to do...

And so, haltingly and clumsily, Takashi told him about it. He really had just picked the thing he knew was back home in the closet where he could touch it, but a story about someone whose friend was always by her side, always thinking she lived in another world that he couldn't presume to touch — and then what had meant the most to her in the end...

It was a good place to begin.

終  
_the end_

(extras and notes to come)


	5. Extras and Notes

**Seven Year Promise**

by Fox in the Stars

based on _Natsume Yuujinchou_  
by Midorikawa Yuki and Brain's Base

* * *

**Extras and Notes**

* * *

POSTSCRIPT  
_Tanuma_

As the Okina brought him home from that rainy night at the laundromat, after they'd stopped before dawn in the Buddha Hall to put the Book of Friends "somewhere very safe," Kaname fell sound asleep. At one point he felt voices washing over him — Natsume, and then Ponta arguing louder — and woke just enough to see Natsume looking down at him and know that he was finally all right and tell him his Book was safe. With that, he let himself sink back down into oblivion, deep and heavy and peaceful.

He didn't wake again until he heard the doors onto the yard slide shut. The room beyond his eyelids fell from direct coppery sun into dusky dimness until someone switched on the light, and he still didn't think to open his eyes or even wonder who was doing it until their hand gently shook his shoulder. It was his father, bringing supper for them both: more rice porridge, this time with miso and vegetables.

"Good evening," his father said as he sat down beside the futon.

"'Evening," Kaname yawned. The two of them were alone in the room — actually alone, with the Okina still collapsed in an exhausted heap. "Natsume was here earlier..."

"Oh, good, you saw him. He took his cat home just a little while ago."

As Kaname dragged himself upright, the leaden weight of his own body was an unfortunately familiar feeling — as was the warning scratchiness creeping in from the back of his throat, the curl in his stomach greeting food as a daunting task — but even in _his_ career of delicate ill-health, this time stood out as something special. When he and his father said _"itadakimasu"_ and began the meal together, his hand shook even lifting the spoon. _This is really getting pathetic..._ Letting his eyes pinch shut in vexation also proved to be a mistake; they didn't want to come open again...

"How far did you go on your walk?" His father called him back from the edge of nodding off.

"Walk...?"

"When you weren't in your room earlier, I called you, and you called back that you were taking a walk — although your voice did sound a bit strange..."

That must have been Ponta covering for him. "I was just out in the yard..."

"And you're really this tired?"

He nodded.

His father took a slow breath and sat back from the food. "I'm going to call and see where I can get you in to a doctor."

Even in Kaname's fatigue-dulled mind, that landed heavily. The "where" implied that the "when" was "immediately," and this late in the day that might even mean the emergency room. But then, since yesterday afternoon his father had seen him call too unwell to even walk home, show up the next morning pale and shaking, then sleep through practically an entire day only to arrive more weak with exhaustion at the end than the beginning. The alarm was all too understandable, and he saw only one alternative to going along with it.

His father got up, went to the door, and raised a hand to open it.

"Dad, wait," Kaname stopped him. "I know why this is happening."

He came back and sat down again, closer beside his son. "Can you tell me about it?"

Kaname knew he had no excuse. His father already believed he sensed spirits — he'd been proving it for years with all the cleansing rituals and feng shui adjustments. Natsume's reason of not wanting to scare the people he loved might hold against announcing that he was possessed, and the time travel story still sounded crazy even to himself, but he found himself shying away from anything specific, and his head ached too much to fight the resistance. "It's... something to do with spirits. I had to help someone with something like that..."

"Natsume?" his father guessed.

"Yeah..."

"Hmm... He did ask me to go easy on them once, but is something wrong now?"

"No, no, this is a one-time thing," Kaname said hastily. "It's done with now, so... I should get better from here..."

"You're absolutely sure?"

"Um... Just about..."

"You say it's a one-time thing..."

Guilt turned in Kaname's stomach. He couldn't call it "a one-time thing" after being possessed once before, walking into a youkai mansion and nearly being eaten, and not telling his father about any of it...

His face must have betrayed him. "Can you promise me you won't do anything dangerous?" his father asked.

He could only stare at his porridge. He had already done dangerous things, and if put to it he would do them all again. He couldn't say "yes" and tell his father an outright lie, but telling him "no, I can't promise that"...

The two of them were caught on that silent edge until his father reached out and gathered Kaname onto his shoulder. "You don't have to answer that." His voice was soft, but he held on so tightly it hurt a little, and Kaname felt the edge of his father's glasses press against his head.

This might be just the way he had held Takashi back there in the past, and now his father might be thinking the very thing he'd been thinking then — _I wish I could keep you and keep it all from happening to you, but I just have this little place to give you what I can give you..._ He wrapped his arms around his father's chest and gently squeezed, hoping that it might feel the way it had felt when Takashi squeezed him.

They sat in that warm embrace for some time.

"Kaname?"

The voice came to him as if he were hearing it underwater and pulled him back to the surface. He had dozed off in his father's arms. "Hm?"

"Try to eat a little more; then you can go back to sleep."

終  
_the end_

* * *

POSTSCRIPT  
_Natsume_

Takashi woke in the night, and to his relief it wasn't the drowning dream. In fact, he was thirsty.

He picked himself up enough to check the clock: nearly two a.m — an inconsiderate time for a phone call, but he hadn't gotten through during the day, and as he'd assured Touko when he tried before bed, Natori always slept with the phone turned off, so there was no risk of waking him.

He went downstairs to the kitchen and drank a glass of water, then switched on the light by the phone and tried the call again. Two rings purred across the line, then the third cut off as it was picked up.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Natori-san? It's Natsume."

"Natsume! Why are you calling so late — is everything all right!?"

"Yeah, it's fine here now, I just couldn't get you earlier so I thought I'd try. Um..." With Natori actually there listening, he hesitated. "I'm sorry to only call you when I want something..."

He heard a warm but intentional laugh. "Don't worry about it. What can I help you with?"

"There's something I'd like you to look into for me," Takashi answered. He looked down at the note he'd brought with him — the full name and address of the Children's Home, hard-won through excruciating phone conversations with relatives — and explained how he knew the place and what he'd seen there years ago. As he spoke, he could hear footsteps on the other end, as if Natori were pacing as he listened.

"—I don't even remember the names of the kids who were there with me to find out what happened to them," he continued, "I just hate to think it's still going on. I don't know how I could pay you, but I thought maybe we could work something out..."

The footsteps stopped.

Another laugh; a wry one this time. "...Because this is the part where I demand money from a high school student before I rescue helpless orphans?"

Phrased that way, of course, it sounded terrible. Natsume wasn't sure what to say, but, for putting him in an awkward spot, for thinking so little of him... "Sorry."

"I told you, don't worry. Will you help me look into it?"

"_Yes!_"

"Well! That's unusual..."

Takashi thought he might have pounced too quickly, but he had made his determination beforehand and braced himself to offer even without being asked. The idea of going back to that place was terrifying, and the thought of trying to deal with it in front of Natori's eyes added another layer to the discomfort — his heart was pounding just from telling the history. But he honestly thought Natori would rather help him than hurt him no matter what he saw, and if it _was_ still going on, he couldn't sit idly by. He knew he couldn't do it alone, and if he was going to get Natori involved, he had to take responsibility...

Across the phone line he heard more footsteps, then a shuffling of paper. "Grab your calendar," Natori said. "Let's see what we can do..."

* * *

When Takashi hung up the phone, Nyanko-sensei was waiting for him in the doorway.

"So you finally got to talk to the airhead."

"Yeah," he replied, turning off the light. The conversation had left him with a satisfaction even deeper than his fear, but it had also wrung him out enough to remember in his bones that it was two a.m.

"I don't know why you don't just drop by there and let me eat them all."

"Well, we still might need your help... But I can't have you do everything for me."

Takashi had known that, too. He could rely on Nyanko-sensei to deal with it; that would be enough to make sure no one else got hurt, and at any other time that would have been enough, but now there was something else he wanted that he knew he couldn't get that way. He couldn't even say what he was looking for, exactly, just that there was a raw spot crying out for something that would sting like medicine and make it better...

It had been like that since the evening at the temple. For all he'd dreaded facing Tanuma, he was glad for what it had turned into, but it had gone right around the places his dread had braced for and hit vulnerable spots he didn't expect. The sound of Tanuma's voice breaking... The unspoken side of _"you were already like that"_ was _"you're still like that,"_ and of course it stung, but then why did it sting almost as much to hear _"you were beautiful,"_ _"you weren't stupid"_? It had been easier just to walk away and say _I was stupid then and I know better now_, but maybe that wasn't so true; maybe it wasn't fair...

He padded back up to his room after Nyanko-sensei. Maybe it was selfish when other people might be suffering, but he wanted to go back there and try to meet that "beautiful" younger self Tanuma had seen. And then maybe they could learn something better, together.

終  
_the end_

* * *

OMAKE

_Takashi and Kaname_

Takashi was walking home with the group — Nishimura, Kitamoto, Tanuma, and Taki — when Nishimura moved in tight to his shoulder and whispered in his ear.

"I finally remembered and looked it up."

"Looked what up?" Takashi whispered back.

"Your dream! If you dream you're falling — right? — Freud said that means you're thinking about giving in to a sexual impulse."

The sudden hot grip of embarrassment clamped down on him. "I told you I didn't want to know!" he hissed.

—A little too loudly. Taki and Tanuma looked around at him curiously. Only Kitamoto was in on the joke, and he shook his head with a tight smile of suppressed amusement. Nishimura backed off, shrugging in faux-innocence.

Takashi stoically weathered the moment, but when it passed it left him casting about for somewhere to put his gaze. He didn't quite realize that he'd settled on the back of Tanuma's head again until Tanuma began to turn toward him...

This time they exchanged _really_ awkward smiles.

終  
_the end_

（ほんとうに）  
_(for real this time, honest)_

* * *

Author's Notes:

Um, yeah, if the Omake wasn't enough of a clue, anyone who wants to read this as pre-slash can be my guest.

Tanuma's postscript is something I really wanted to do just to raise the unexplored-in-canon issues with him and his dad, but it wasn't important to the main story, so I made it a bonus.

And Natsume's postscript obviously sets up for a sequel, but I have no plans to write it. Bunny free to good home.

Another story I have no plans to write but think could be awesome: a "what if" version where Touko _could_ hear Toshige. I suspect she'd nail the flashback in one try, if only because she'd be too smart to leave little Takashi alone until she saw with her own eyes that he was safe — although she might have more trouble in other ways. The necessary reveals would be even more disruptive (or would they?), but that could make things fun, too...

Regarding Toshige: If you remember the Rock God from the episode "The Fox Child's Watch," Toshige is that guy's weird cousin who takes the time schtick further and happens to be more upfront about what a sweetie he is (presumptuous, but a sweetie). Inventing youkai names feels challenging/dicey to me, like there are rules to it that I don't have my white American head around, but I tried. My sense is that the youkai names do sound like Japanese names but like relatively unusual Japanese names, which Toshige seemed to fit. Also, "toshi" can mean "year(s)," and "ke/ge" can mean "hair" for a sense maybe something like "old beard," plus the character for "heavy; stacked up" can be pronounced "shige" when it appears in names, so blending "toshi" with "shige" could perhaps suggest "weight of years."

I pictured this story as an imaginary two-parter of the anime, with the break at roughly the end of chapter two, on the cliffhanger reveal that the first trip into the past didn't do the trick ('natch). It started out as my way of doing the "somebody please go back in time and give little Takashi a big hug and tell him it gets better" story, which led me to invent Toshige in search of time powers that would do the job but be more limited and creative than dial-a-date time machine stuff (I have a deep distrust of time travel plots and try to parry the issue every time I end up with one). From there it spiralled out of control and kicked status quo in the head until kicking status quo in the head took over as the point of the story, but I'm happy with that.

Thanks to everyone who's commented, and I hope you all enjoyed it!


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